John Singer Sargent: In Memoriam, Pt. 4

"George McCulloch" by John Singer Sargent

"At the end of that winter in Rome, John Sargent's father, from no compliance with his delightful and insistent wife, still less owing to an expressed wish (I feel sure) on the part of that grave and docile son, so absorbed in the sights of the moment and the precocious habit of translating them into lines and colours - quite spontaneously - found himself face to face with the startling possibility that God (since Dr. Sargent saw God's work everywhere) had given him a son who was a painter, and that if such proved to be the case, why his own wishes and hopes must go to the wall. I have confused remembrance of words to some such effect, words spoken before me or to my parents, or perhaps guesswork on the part of my more precociously world-wise self. For, as already said, John seemed too much absorbed in his gifts to be thinking of their future, or to use childish pressure and machinations (as I might have done) to secure their cultivation. 

Be that as it may, the sacrifice was made, and in the completest, wisest manner: all facilities should be granted for John to become a painter, but never an amateur, and only when he had received such education as might enable him to know his own mind and, if need be, turn to other things. But of the U.S. Navy there could, of course, be no more question. I cannot help thinking that this legend of Dr. Sargent's sacrifice of his wishes and fears to his son's genius is, whether or not literally true, beautiful enough for us to hope it may contain a core of truth. 

And its beauty is heightened, its truth vouched for, by my recollection of the attitude of John Sargent when he had long been a universally recognized great man, and his father, after a life of empty expatriation, had become a silent and broken old one. Shortly before his life came to its end, I chanced to stay with the Sargent family, and I can never forget the loving tenderness with which, the day's work over, John would lead his father from the dinner table and sit alone with him till it was time to be put to bed. 'I am going to sit and smoke,' the old man repeated evening after evening, 'with my son John.' That, and not any consideration of this great painting or that, is what rounds off the legend of John Sargent's boyhood when we were children together, more than fifty years ago."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "J.S.S.: In Memoriam" by Vernon Lee.)