considering; and so much without a thought of either praise
or blame. Mr. Sargent’s life has been the result of peculiar
circumstances--fortunate circumstances some may think, or perhaps
unfortunate, as others may hold. At least they have been instrumental
in bringing forth an accomplished painter whose art no one can fail
to admire. That his work may be admired understandingly it is quite
necessary to comprehend the personality of the artist--to understand
his education, his associations, his artistic and social environments.
For if the man himself is cosmopolitan his art is not less so. It is
the perfection of world-style, the finality of method. It is learned to
an extraordinary degree, accurate, scientific, almost faultless; but it
belongs to no country, reflects no people, discloses no sentiment, and
causes no emotion. It is calmly intellectual and begets enthusiasm only
for its absolute truthfulness to appearance and the brilliant facility
of its achievement.
To behold and to accomplish--that is to see and to paint--seem to have
been Sargent’s ambition from the start. What gave his original impetus
toward art is not disclosed, but his mother was a clever person with
water-colors, and she may have prompted his interest in painting. At
any rate, he early became proficient in drawing. As a boy, sketching
in the Tyrol, Leighton saw his work and remarked its skill. Later on
he was entered as a pupil in the schools of the Florence Academy.
Travelling at vacation times with his parents he saw many pictures and
doubtless studied the old masters from many angles. Everywhere among
the Renaissance painters he must have remarked the skilled craftsman,
and perhaps his early aspirations were to excel as they had excelled.
Certainly it was with no little knowledge of drawing that he presented
himself at the Paris _atelier_ of Carolus Duran in 1874, aged eighteen.
Carroll Beckwith, one of the earliest and best-loved of the pupils in
the _atelier_ and a life-long friend of Sargent, has often told me the
story of Sargent’s arrival. He came with his father, and when Beckwith
opened the door he found a refined-looking gentleman and a tall, thin
son standing there. Beckwith, as the _massier_ of the class, presented
the pair to the master. The portfolio of sketches, which Sargent had
under his arm, was presently examined, with the class forming an
admiring half-circle at the back. It is reported that Carolus observed
that the _nouveau_ had much to unlearn, but Beckwith says the class was
astonished at the pencil-drawings and the facility of the water-colors.
The _nouveau_ was accepted by the master and was a marked success from
the start.
Carolus was a good teacher after his kind and impressed his method
upon Sargent, who accepted and bettered it. The method in brief did
not start with the carefully prepared sketch of Ingres or even a
charcoal-drawing upon the canvas, but a full brush of color laid on in
mass. Pupils were to draw, model, paint at one and the same time. In
blocking in a figure the paint might be thick and the edges at first
sharp, but the values, the tone, the properly constructed body were
to be absolute. Underlying structure was a necessity. Sargent learned
that early in his career and never forgot it. His brush-work has been
thought his greatest technical feature, but that of itself would
be for nothing holden did it not by its certainty produce absolute
drawing. He has always been a consummate draftsman.
Yet it was Carolus who taught facility and ease with the brush and
preached Velasquez to his pupils. No doubt the master saw great
qualities in the Spaniard where his pupils saw only great dexterity,
but at any rate their attention was called to the fact that a picture
may be made interesting in its surface and be the better therefor.
Sargent was a quick convert to this idea, and he very soon developed
a breadth and truth of brush-work that astonished his master and set
Paris talking. All his life it has been one of the pronounced features
of his technique, and yet not a feature by which his art stands or
falls. One of his latest portraits--that of Henry James--does not
noticeably show it. The surface is almost smooth so inconspicuous is
the brushing, and yet there are few who will not count the James as one
of the best considered, cleanest cut, and most profound of Sargent’s
portraits.
He remained under Carolus for several years, assisted the master in
some of his decorations, and soon began to produce noteworthy work of
his own. One of his earliest portraits was that of Carolus himself,
which at once became talked about, not only as a likeness of the famous
master but as the work of a remarkable pupil. In 1878 he painted
_En route pour la pêche_, a figure composition which attracted much
attention in the Salon. The next year he went to Spain, and from
that journey came “El Jaleo,” now in the Boston Museum, and a number
of other Spanish pictures. These theme pictures, much as they were
praised, did not, could not, determine the painter’s bent. Like other
young men, he probably had determined nothing, and eventually let
circumstances settle the matter of subject. He did not have to wait
long. In 1881 he put out a full-length portrait called a “Lady with
Rose” that had so much vitality about it, as well as charm, that it far
outran all his earlier performances. The success of it, followed by the
“Hall of the Four Children,” in which four of the Beit children were
shown, and then the portrait of “Madame G----,” seemed automatically to
place him among the portraitists.
The last-named picture, a full-length in profile, now in the
Metropolitan Museum, set all Paris by the ears. The wonderful if
somewhat sharp drawing of the face and head, the equally fine
portraiture of the hands, arms, figure, and dress, commanded instant
attention. The subject was a great beauty, and the painter, painting
precisely what he saw, had dealt with her remorselessly. Even then
they began to discuss Sargent as a character reader, an anatomist,
a psychologist, a physiognomist--great nonsense to be sure, but
nevertheless suggestive of his remarkable truth of observation. It
was perhaps this very quality that soon brought him more commissions
for portraits than he could fill and possibly led to the virtual
abandonment for the time being of other themes.
In taking up portraiture as the field of his endeavor Sargent was
perhaps wise as well as fortunate, for it requires the keen, cool
observer, the man who can record the fact without romance, to make
a good portrait-painter; and Sargent has proved himself an observer
above all. He is not a poet in paint, nor does he indulge in sentiment,
feeling, or emotion. He records the fact. If I apprehend him rightly,
such theory of art as he possesses is founded in observation. One night
in Gibraltar some fifteen years ago I was dining with him at the old
Cecil Hotel. We had been on ship for a dozen days and were glad to
get ashore. That night, as a very unusual thing, Sargent talked about
painting--talked of his own volition. He suggested his theory of art in
a single sentence: “You see things that way” (pointing slightly to the
left) “and I see them this way” (pointing slightly to the right). He
seemed to think that would account for the variation or peculiarity of
eye and mind, and, with a manner of doing--a personal method--there was
little more to art. Such a theory would place him in measured agreement
with Henry James, whose definition of art has been quoted many times:
“Art is a point of view and genius a way of looking at things.” But
whether Sargent has followed James, or James followed Sargent, in that
definition, I am not able to record.
James, however, did not stop on that precise line. In 1887 in writing
about Sargent he said: “The highest result is attained when to the
element of quick perception a certain faculty of lingering reflection
is added,” and he continued, “I mean the quality in the light of
which the artist sees deep into his subject, undergoes it, absorbs
it, discovers in it new things that were not on the surface, becomes
patient with it, and almost reverent, and, in short, elevates and
humanizes the technical problems.” James certainly meant by that
sympathy, deep human interest, if not sentiment, feeling, and emotion;
but Sargent never showed these qualities in his work and has more than
once repudiated them by word of mouth. It is a popular contention that
he does see “new things that were not on the surface,” that he is a
character reader; and that he is a bitter satirist in paint. Again the
painter has denied these alleged accomplishments, and with some warmth
into the bargain.
Frank Millet told me years ago that Sargent, painting at Broadway,
England, needed a white marble column in a picture he was then working
upon. There was none at hand, but, at Millet’s suggestion, he got a
carpenter to make a wooden column and had it painted a clean white.
This was set up and Sargent tried to paint it in the picture as a
marble column, but with the unexpected result that on the canvas it
looked not like marble but like a wooden column painted white. He could
not get below “the surface,” though he tried to do so. And Kenyon Cox
in a strikingly just estimate of Sargent[17] tells this story: “He
had painted a portrait in which he was thought to have brought out
the inner nature of his sitter, and to have ‘seen through the veil’
of the external man. When asked about it he is said to have expressed
some amazement at the idea, and to have remarked: ‘If there were a
veil I should paint the veil; I can paint only what I see.’” And Cox
adds: “Whether he said it or not, I am inclined to think that this
sentence expresses the truth.” It does; and also Sargent’s self-imposed
limitation. He does not want to see below the surface; he thinks the
surface in itself, if rightly handled, is sufficient. But there is an
explanation that may reconcile these different contentions.
[17] _Old Masters and New_, by Kenyon Cox, New York, 1905.
A painter who has been looking at human heads for many years sees
more than the man who casually looks up to recognize an acquaintance
on the street. I do not mean that he sees more “character”--that is
more scholarship or conceit or pride of purse or firmness of will
or shrewdness of thought; but merely that he sees the physical
conformation more completely than we do. Well, every one sooner or
later moulds his own face. It becomes marked or set or shaped in
response to continued methods of thinking and acting. When that face
comes under the portrait-painter’s eye he does not see the scholar,
the banker, the senator, the captain of industry; but he does see,
perhaps, certain depressions of the cheek or lines about the eyes
or mouth or contractions of the lips or protrusions of the brow or
jaw that appeal to him strongly because they are cast in shadow or
thrown up sharply in relief of light. These surface features he paints
perhaps with more emphasis than they possess in the original because
they appeal to him emphatically, and presently the peculiar look that
indicates the character of the man appears. What the look may indicate,
or what kind or phase of character may be read in or out of the look,
the portrait-painter does not usually know or care. It is not his
business to know. He paints what he sees and has as little discernment
of a character as of a mind. He gives, perhaps without knowing their
meaning, certain protrusions and recessions of the surface before him
and lets the result tell what tale it may.
[Illustration: “Mrs. Pulitzer,” by John S. Sargent.]
In the production of the portrait accurate observation is more than
half the battle. If a painter sees and knows his subject thoroughly,
he will have little trouble in telling what he sees and knows; and
to say of Sargent that he observes rightly and records truly is to
state the case in a sentence. Nothing in the physical presence escapes
him. The slight inclination of a head, the shyness of a glance, the
mobility of a mouth, the uneasiness of a hand, the nervous strain of a
gesture are all turned to account in the ultimate result. Every tone
of color in itself and in its relation to the other tones, every light
in its relation to its shadow and to the other lights, every melting
contour in contrast with every accented contour, and every texture in
relation to every other texture--all are caught within the angle of the
painter’s focus.
His portraits are the complete demonstration of his observation. They
may not be all that could be wished for in soul, but they are not
lacking in physical life--in that which can be seen. You will not be
able to look into the eyes and seem to know the inner consciousness of
the sitter, as in a portrait by Rembrandt (the “soul” is Rembrandt’s,
not the sitter’s); but you will feel the bodily presence, the physical
fact, as you do in a portrait by Frans Hals. There is the Marquand
portrait at the Metropolitan Museum to which reference may be made.
How well he has emphasized the facts of the spare figure, the refined
if somewhat weary face! How very effective the placing of the figure
in the chair, the turn of the head, and that thin hand against which
the head rests. Every physical feature is just as it should be. Look
at the bone structure of the forehead, the setting of the eyes, the
protrusion of the lower lip, the modelling of the mouth and chin. Could
anything be more positive! The painter has given you only what he has
seen, but can you not get out of these physical features--even from
the thin, patrician hand--some indication of the man’s character? The
painter _does_ give the character of the sitter but not in the way the
populace supposes. The effort is not conscious. The character is merely
the result of accurately seeing and drawing the surface appearance.
All Sargent’s portraits of men are revelations of things seen and they
are all based on the physical presence. The “Speaker Reed” and the
“Mr. Chamberlain” are likenesses of men in the flesh, done apparently
without a thought of their being statesmen. There is nothing of the
official about them and you would not be able to say that they were
political leaders. They did not look the politician in life and the
painter would not go behind the facial report. Sometimes a knowledge
of what the man really was may have proved bothersome to him. He
told me in 1903 that he had done very little satisfactory work that
year with portraits of officials at Washington. He liked his head of
“General Leonard Wood” and was much interested in the type, but the
standing portrait of “President Roosevelt” he did not think any too
successful. The “President Wilson” done in 1917 is of a piece with the
Roosevelt portrait and probably both were handicapped by shortness of
time--insufficient time for complete observation. But aside from being
hurried, the thought that he was painting people high in office and
much was expected of him, must have had a deterrent effect upon his
brush. For he could no more paint the office than he could paint behind
the “veil” or get at the “soul.” John Hay, Edwin Booth, Richard M.
Hunt were very distinguished characters, but Sargent had no recipe for
painting distinction and had to paint what was before him. The result
was that the Hay and the Hunt were in no way remarkable portraits,
whereas the Booth was exceptionally fine. It was not the characters
that Booth had played but his own gentle, refined nature that had left
its mark upon his face. Sargent saw it readily enough and had no need
to plough beneath the surface for it.
His method of procedure with women’s portraits is not different from
that of men. He seeks the personal presence, sees keenly every physical
peculiarity, and gives as truthfully as is consistent with pigments
the facts as he sees them. There is no romance of mood, no reflective
musing, no idealizing or prettifying of the likeness. All phases of
fashionable life have come to his studio and he has painted a host
of social celebrities, some of them more worthy of his brush than
others. Many times he has painted the grand lady in flashing jewels
and gorgeous robes and been accused of vulgarity in the doing of it.
But the accusation will not hold. The vulgarity has been in the sitter
and has been shown by the painter without feeling or perhaps quite
unconsciously. Many times the lady, the robes, and the jewels have been
given without a suspicion of vulgarity because there was none in the
model. That wondrous creation that appeared in the. Salon so many years
ago--the tall lady in the magenta gown--was something bordering on the
bizarre; it was flashing, glittering, noisy, but not unrefined in any
sense. The portrait of “Miss Terry as Lady Macbeth” is “stagey,” as
perhaps it should be, for again the staginess was before the painter;
but surely it is not wanting in taste. And for refinement, distinction,
sensitiveness, what could be better than the beautiful portrait of
“Lady Agnew”? Whatever may be the qualities or defects of the sitter,
Sargent may be trusted to record the facts before him exactly as they
are, and let the burden of their explanation fall on the friends or the
family, if it must.
[Illustration: “Carnation Lily, Lily Rose,” by John S. Sargent.
In the National Gallery of British Art, London.]
His successes in other fields of painting than portraiture are due to
the same keenness of observation and are perhaps merely manifestations
of the portrait instinct. The lovely “Carnation Lily Lily Rose” is
little more than the portrait of two little girls lighting Chinese
lanterns in a flower-garden. It is of course carefully arranged, and
told with great beauty of color and light; but the painting of the
lilies shows the same exactness of observation that characterizes the
faces. They are portraits of lilies. “Carmencita” is again a portrait
of a dancing-girl in costume, with powder on her face and rouge on her
lips. She has paused a moment from dancing and is breathing quickly and
Sargent chose that moment to paint her. His Venetian scenes, including
the later water-colors, are again portraits of places just as his
alligators lying in the mud, or his “St. Jerome” lying in the wood, or
his marble quarries lying in the sun are striking likenesses of the
objects themselves. They are all treated in the portrait spirit--that
is, from the point of view of an observer and a recorder rather than
a rhapsodist or a lover. Sargent does not rhapsodize, at least not in
his works. The decoration in the Boston Public Library is possibly an
exception. It evidently cost the painter much time and thought, but the
symbolism of it bewilders and its excellence lies less in meaning or
appropriateness than in masterful execution. It does not enthrall or
sway or charm; it astonishes by the brilliancy of its coloring and the
supreme excellence of its workmanship. It is something that one marvels
over but cannot fall in love with. And the most satisfactory part of it
is perhaps the panel of the prophets, which is essentially portraiture
again--that is, something painted from the model.
If I have not misstated the case it would seem as though Sargent’s
painting could be epitomized as nature plus an eye and a hand, external
nature at that. He has never pretended or suggested that he delves
beneath the surface, that he dreams or poetizes or evokes loveliness
out of his inner consciousness and infuses it into his canvases. It is
doubtful if he has even indulged to any great extent in that elevation
of the technical problem by long reflection which Henry James refers
to. From sheer truth of observation his children, as in the “Carnation
Lily Lily Rose” or the “Beatrice,” are childlike, and perhaps shy,
his young women graceful and possibly nervous or affected, his men
forceful, mentally alert, occasionally posing for posterity. He tells
the truth and knows not how to do otherwise. How radically different
in result are the portraits of Lady Ian Hamilton, Mrs. Pulitzer, Mrs.
Marquand, of Colonel Bruce, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Rockefeller! Yet who
that has known the originals will say that they are not true to the
originals!
[Illustration: “Carmencita,” by John S. Sargent.
In the Luxembourg, Paris.]
A limitation! Yes, but what artist has not limited his endeavors! It
is by not trying to do everything that occasionally one succeeds in
doing something. And if in painting one chooses to be a recorder of
facts rather than a concocter of fiction, why should we grieve! How
very little Sargent can concoct anything, even composition, is apparent
in his group-portraits of two or three people--the Misses Hunter,
for an example. The pattern bothered him, he could not “arrange” the
sitters satisfactorily, and, finally having crowded them into the
canvas, he painted them as he saw them, with the result that they look
crowded. The fresco at Boston is decorative, to be sure, by virtue of
its coloring and gilding, but as a composition it will hardly pass
muster. It is a curious gathering of jewel-like hues, but it can make
small pretense to a satisfactory mural composition. Sargent has never
demonstrated great ability in arrangement, and so far as the public
knows has never tried for historical composition.
The portrait of the single figure is his greatest success. Placing
it upon the canvas calls for no great imagination or change in the
model; and the opportunity for good drawing--his strongest technical
accomplishment perhaps--is present. How well he draws! His light is in
no way remarkable; it lacks subtlety, mystery, and all that cookery of
the brush whereby light and shade are distorted and made to suggest
the existence of things unseen; but his drawing is so profound that at
times it is almost uncanny. It is impossible to separate it from the
swift handling of the surface, for he gets the underlying structure and
the overlying texture with one and the same stroke. By a twist of the
brush he may give drawing, texture, value, hue, all at once. In this
respect--his wonderful facility with the brush--he is in the class with
Rubens.
It is this latter feature of his work that excites the greatest
admiration of his fellow artists. The final result of his handling
is to give one the impression of work done easily, in fact, rather
improvised than premeditated. But the impression is somewhat
misleading. Every stroke is calmly calculated, every touch is coolly
designed. If the effect looks labored, the palette-knife is used to
clean the canvas and the work is done over again. Infinite pains are
taken that infinite pains shall not appear. There is no excitement
or feverish haste, however swift the brush may seem to travel. The
nimble hand obeys a well-trained mind, and if the work is easily
and accurately done, it is not through any burst of inspiration or
preternatural facility of the moment, but through long and careful
training.
Least of all is there any trickery about it. The painting is just plain
painting with ordinary canvases, brushes, and pigments squeezed out
of lead tubes. It is the simplest and most direct kind of brushing.
Sargent has never been led astray by any of the technical phases or
crazes. His method of handling is perhaps Parisian though it harks
back to Hals, Velasquez, Goya, Tiepolo, without exactly resembling any
one of them. In its fluid quality perhaps it has more affinity with the
work of Rubens, though again there is no positive resemblance. It is
Sargent’s own way of expressing himself.
That there are defects attending this quality of expressiveness will
not be denied, but they are comparatively unimportant. In the simple
spreading of wet liquid paint certain results of depth or hue or
texture are likely to be sacrificed. Often a profound shadow depth is
produced by repeated glazings; thumbing and kneading of pigments on the
canvas frequently result in a quality of color that cannot be directly
spread with a brush; and, again, there are peculiar effects produced by
underbasing that are not obtainable by surface manipulation. Kenyon Cox
thinks that Sargent perhaps loses somewhat in textures by his direct
method and cites as illustration his flesh painting.
“The sweeps of opaque color laid on with a full brush are apt to give a
texture as of drapery, no matter how accurate the particular tints may
be; and if we are to have the pleasure of instantaneous execution, we
must generally accept it with some diminution of the pleasure derivable
from beautiful flesh painting.... Indeed, it may be said that the
highest beauty of coloring is always more or less incompatible with
too great frankness of procedure and demands a certain reticence and
mystery.”[18]
[18] _Ibid._