John Singer Sargent: First Trip to America

"An Atlantic Storm" by J.S. Sargent

In 1876, John Singer Sargent sailed with Mrs. Sargent and Emily, his sister, for America. It was his first contact with the United States. He was an American by parentage, born and educated in the Old World, steeped in the culture of Europe, and now, at the age of twenty for the first time, he was introduced to his native country. 

Even in America, which was only for four months, the family continued to move, never omitting to see anything that had the least claim to interest. In that period they visited Philadelphia, Newport, Chicago, Saratoga, Niagara, Lake George, Quebec and Montreal, ending up with Washington and New York. It was the year of the Exhibition at Philadelphia, which coinciding with the the speeding up or large fortunes, did a great deal to start the fashion of collecting famous works of art. 

Sargent was entirely taken up with the examples of Japanese and Chinese art. It was just the moment when in Europe, and more especially in France, Oriental painting was influencing the modern school of artists.  Everywhere collectors were hunting for the works of Hokusai, Outamaro and Harunobu. Japanese artists were taken as models of reticence and economy in the statement of a fact, and as creating spatial atmosphere by means of a few lines. By the time Sargent was at work in Duran's studio the impulse from Japan had already passed into French painting, and its message had been extracted and absorbed. At the Philadelphia Exhibition he had before his eyes a further proof of what might be learnt from the East.

During his visit to America he seems to have done little painting. On the journey back across the Atlantic, during a storm in which their vessel was caught, he did a study of waves. This is one of the few occasions on which he took the sea as a subject for a picture, often though he painted water in fountains or lakes or canals. In his study of the Atlantic, the force and volume of the waves, the desolate iteration of crest and trough, and the dark anger of the storm are dramatically contrasted with the thin white track made on the waste of waters by the vessel and the frail platform from which the sketch is taken. It is a picture with distance, a thing comparatively rare in Sargent's landscapes."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Hard Working Student

"William Butler Yeats" by J.S. Sargent

"At eighteen years of age John Singer Sargent was still slight in build, a little shy and awkward in manner, reserved (as he remained throughout his life) in conversation, but charming, fresh, unsophisticated and even idealistic in his outlook on the world, engagingly modest and diffident, speaking perfect French, hardly aware yet of his gifts, and bound by a devotion to his sister Emily and his parents. All testimony agrees. And so he crosses the threshold of his career.

From the first he was a worker of astonishing capacity. He would breakfast every morning with his sister Emily at seven so as to arrive at the studio before eight, and on Mondays in order to secure a good place for the week he would start earlier. At five o'clock in the evening he would leave the studio and go to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he remained until seven. Dinner over, he would go to the studio of Bonnat and attend a class which lasted from eight to ten at night. On Sundays he worked at home, dining with his family and bringing fellow-students into the radius of that encouraging milieu. Among these were Caroll Beckwith, Frank Fowler, Russell, Edelfeldt the Finnish painter and Alden Weir. With all this he found time for music and for reading.

He was rarely to be seen except in the Latin Quarter. He was immersed in his work. Paul Helleu, then a fellow-students, remembers him as always dressed with distinctive care in a world which still affected the baggy corduroy trousers tight at the ankle, the slouch hats or tam o'shanters, and the coloured sashes associated with the Latin Quarter. He was a striking figure as he strode down the Rue Bonaparte to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and already a little noted and recognized as one of the very few whose future could be looked on as definitely assured."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Lessons from Duran

"The Cancale Oyster Gatherers (on their way to fishing)"
by John Singer Sargent

"What did John Singer Sargent owe to the teaching of Duran? The question is best answered by remembering Duran's precepts and seeing how far they are reflected in Sargent's art. 

1. It has already been shown how Duran insisted on the study of Velasquez and the omission in art of all that was not essential to the realization of the central purpose of a painting. He had himself traveled far from the sharp contrast of values by which he had dramatized his picture 'L'Assassine.' He had got rid of his tendency to be spectacular. From Velasquez he had learnt to simplify.
   
   
2. His teaching was focused on the study of values and half-tones - above all, half-tones. Here lies, he would say, the secret of painting, in the half-tone of each plane, in economizing the accents and in the handling of the lights so that they should play their part in the picture only with a palpable and necessary significance. Other things were subordinate. 

If Sargent excels in these respects, it is sufficient to recall the fact that they formed the core of Duran's instruction. There is no need to put his influence higher. Few pupils in painting who have the talent to absorb their master's teaching fail in the long run to outgrow his influence and to progress beyond and outside it on lines of their own.

Sargent himself always recognized his debt to the teaching of Duran. At the height of his fame, when looking at a portrait by a younger painter, he observed to Mr. William James: 'That has value. I wonder who taught him to do that. I thought Carolus was the only man who taught that. He couldn't do it himself, but he could teach it.' Again, when Mr. James asked him how to avoid false accents he said: 'You must classify the values. If you begin with the middle tone and work up from it toward the darks - so that you deal last with your highest lights and darkest darks - you avoid false accents. That's what Carolus taught me.  And Franz Hals - it's hard to find anyone who knew more about oil paint than Franz Hals - and that was his procedure. Of course, a sketch is different. You don't mind false accents there. But once you have made them in something which you wish to carry far, in order to correct them you have to deal with both sides of them and get into a lot of trouble. So that's the best method for anything you wish to carry far in oil paint.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Atelier Duran

"Carolus-Duran" by John Singer Sargent

"Carolus Duran's atelier was managed by some American students, who made a fixed charge to cover expenses. Duran gave his services for nothing. That was the general practice. A painter would look to a return for his services in the prestige of his studio, and the missionary work done on his behalf by his students. In all cases the advancement of art was a sufficient pretext.

The pupils of the Atelier Duran worked in a studio on the Boulevard Montparnasse. A model would be drawn on Monday and painting would begin on Tuesday. Twice a week, generally on Tuesday and Friday, Duran himself would descend from Olympus to review the work of his pupils. The visit was a very formal affair. Nothing was omitted that could add prestige to the occasion.

The Master's entry was the signal for the pupils to rise in their places, then while they stood beside their easels he would approach one or other of them, and after a moment's inspection of their work and without turning around, hold out his hand for the brush or pencil with which the pupil stood ready. Having made his corrections Duran would pass on to a neighbouring easel. His observations were brief and his commendations exceedingly rare. 

One day a week the whole class would adjourn to Duran's own studio, where, with the awe in those days more easily inspired, they would watch the Master at work. No great cordiality seems to have existed between Duran and his pupils. They were there to learn and he was there to teach, and that was the beginning and end of it.

It was, then, to such a workshop and under such a master that Sargent at the age of eighteen was admitted as a pupil."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Carolus Duran

"Dame au Gant" by Carolus Duran

"Few painters have reached success by steeper paths than Carolus Duran, John Singer Sargent's most famous teacher. Duran was born at Lille on July 4, 1837, and in time was entered as a pupil of the painter Souchon, who had been a pupil of David. His promise was unmistakable, but his poverty was great. After bitter struggles he amassed just sufficient money to seek in 1858 the wider field of Paris. Here his talents were unrecognized, and he was unable to earn a livelihood. 

He attended not the Ecole des Beaux Arts but the Academie Suisse, where he met Fantin Latour, and where teaching meant, in the main, leaving pupils to work out their own salvation. He frequented the Louvre, and by copying well-known pictures for a few francs he was able to keep himself from actual want. His hope was fast failing. But he believed in himself, and he was gifted with a spirit not easily vanquished. 

At the blackest moment in 1860, he returned to Lille, where with his picture 'Visite au Convalescent' he won the Wicar prize. With the money he set out for Italy. There in the monastery of Subiaco, in the neighbourhood of Rome, he shut himself up to study the elements of his art. From thence he returned to Paris to experience a further period of trial and discouragement. He could find no patron and he was unable to obtain orders.

Then in 1866 he produced a picture, 'L'Assassine,' strongly  marked by the influence of Courbet and now in the museum at Lille. The purchase of the picture enable Carolus Duran to visit Spain where he fell under the influence of Velasquez. After six months he returned to Paris, dominated by his impressions of the Spanish master, whose works he had assiduously copied. Under this new inspiration, he painted 'La Dame au Gant,' a portrait of Madame Duran. With this picture his reputation was established. He moved from success to success, becoming the most popular portrait painter in Paris. Fortune, as if to atone, now showered on him prosperity and success. He became a dominant figure in Paris life. 

He was a favourite of the critics. He was acclaimed as a colourist. His portraits were applauded for their incisive force, for the skill with which he laid emphasis on revealing characteristics, for his power of detaching the sitter from superflouous accessories and decor and bringing him into a relation personal with the spectator.

It was at this point, in 1874, that John Singer Sargent entered his atelier."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Paris

"In the Luxembourg Gardens" by J.S. Sargent

"It cannot have been without misgiving that FitzWilliam Sargent decided that Paris instead of England was the place for John's art education; a decision which was proof of the liberality of his judgment and his belief in his son. Never was foresight better rewarded. In the interval the Sargents pursued their usual wanderings, and in February, 1874, the year which was to see Sargent established in Paris, they took apartments on the Grand Canal, Venice. Towards the end of this time John wrote his cousin, Mrs. Austin:

'I have been waiting all this time to send this letter with one from Mama... We are packing up in order to leave in the first week in May but the date of our departure is rendered rather uncertain by the provoking fact of my having sprained my ankle very severely two weeks ago on the stairs of the Academy... The Academy in Paris is probably better than the one here and we hear that the French artists undoubtedly the best now-a-days, are willing to take pupils in their studios. I do not think, however, that I am sufficiently advanced to enter a studio now, and I will probably have to study another year at the Academy. We go to Paris now for a short time to make enquiries about this, which will decide whether we go to Paris or not for next winter.  This unhappy Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence is the most unsatisfactory institution imaginable. However, this has been of no more consequence to me since my sprained ankle keeps me at home where I have a very handsome Neapolitan model to draw and paint, who plays on the Zampogna and tamburino and dances tarantellas for us when he is tired of sitting.'

In August the Sargents moved to Paris where John at once started work at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He was very soon faced with an examination, and that the prospect filled him with all the normal perturbations and misgivings:

'The exam is the Concours de Place for the life school of M. Yvon and it seems unreasonably long and difficult and terrible. It began on the 26th of September and two weeks are still to come. The epreuves [tests] de Perspective et d'Anatomie are over. I wish I might say as much for the Dessin d'Ornement which is in store for us tomorrow morning. But the supreme moment is one of twelve hours wherein we must make a finished drawing of the human form divine.'

In October he entered the studio of Carolus Duran, then the foremost portrait painter in Paris."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Decision to be an Artist

"On His Holidays, Norway" by J.S. Sargent

"The winter of 1868-69 was spent by the Sargents in Rome, and here the momentous decision was made as to John Singer Sargent's future. Every day that passed had emphasized his affinity with art. In Rome a German-American landscape painter, Carl Welsch, long since forgotten, took an interest in the boy and noted his aptitude for drawing. He invited him to come and work in his studio, and Sargent used to spend the mornings in copying the watercolors of Welsch. Those who frequented the society of the Sargents also recognized that the boy possessed a talent of no ordinary quality. The recognition became vocal. It was supported by his mother and reluctantly admitted by his father. 

Sargent was at this time tall for his thirteen years, slim of form, warm in colour, his hair dark, a look of alacrity and welcome in his eyes, a gait that was brisk and decided, and spirits that broke lightly into laughter. He was already an indomitable worker, with a disposition mellow with kindliness and goodwill. If he was sometimes imposed on, and if his good nature sometimes seemed to warrant aggression, this could never be carried far. He had a hot temper, a reserve of pugnacity, which was not so deep down that it could not be roused.

He was now specifically pledged to the profession of an artist, was busy in and out of season with his pencil - observing and noting before getting to work, crouching over his sketch, then lifting his head and holding up the drawing the better to criticize. The drawings were precocious, not in imagination, but as literal records of what was immediately before him. He drew whatever came to hand, never worrying to find special subjects, but just enjoying the sheer fun of translating on to paper the record of what he saw: the shadow of an oleander on a wall, the attitude of a fellow traveller in a railway carriage, the bronze figures around the tomb of Maximilian at Innsbruck.

Mrs. Sargent pressed on with the artistic education of her son. He was entered as a student from the life at the Academia delle Belle Arti, where he quickly asserted his superiority and gained the annual prize. During the springtime, when not engaged in his classes, he would set out with his mother to sketch in the neighborhood, in the Boboli Gardens, or in the Poderi of Fiesole, or among the valleys and slopes that curl and tumble from the mountains to the plain, or among the olives and cypresses at their feet."

To be continued

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