John Singer Sargent: Watercolors

"Quarry at Chocorua" by John Singer Sargent

"John Singer Sargent's watercolors have a happy air of impromptu, of the artist having come upon a scene at a particular moment and there and then translated it into paint. He had a preference for scenes in which the hand of man had taken a part. If he turned to natural scenery, he chose wildness rather than beauty, strange effects in mountain formations, gorges, tumbling glaciers or rocks strewn as though they were the missiles on a Titans' battlefield. But whatever he painted, watercolor in his hands seemed to lose something of its limitation and become a more powerful medium, giving the substances represented a solidity and volume more associated with oil color. 

His general habit was to make the lightest indications in pencil to fix the relative position of objects, and then, after wetting the paper, to paint with great rapidity. It was not his habit to use the opaque method. He trusted for his highlights to the white of the paper. From the white of the paper he would with equal facility conjure the satin of a dress, the texture of a marble, or the silky flanks of the ox. 

He paints as a man of muscle rather than mood. His power is displayed in the supremacy of his drawing, the opulence of his color, the skill of his statement, finite as it often is, and the glowing warmth of his sunlit scenes. And in these he excels, not so much by the subtlety of his omissions as by the harmony of his assertions and his exuberant objectivity.

Of his own watercolors he was a severe critic; rarely satisfied, deprecating praise, and always ready to point out what he regarded inadequate or mistaken. When he brought home one of his well-known sketches, 'Quarry at Chocorua,' Mrs. James said to him: 'How delightful it must be to know that every time you work you will bring back something fine.' Sargent replied: 'But I hardly ever do! Once in a great, great while.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)