There are some painters whose work we may personally wholly
dislike--dislike their outlook--even our favourite subjects becoming
intolerable to us in their art. It is something in their nature
antipathetic to our own. Of course, mediocre work does not assume such
proportions in our mind. Then there are painters who, through some
affinity of temperament with our own, make everything their art touches
pleasant to us. And then there are the impersonal artists, Velazquez,
Millais, and Sargent, taking apparently quite an impersonal view of
life. Sargent's world is everybody's world, and if we are affected one
way or another by it, it is as life affects us.
One has heard a painter say, "I can paint those things because I love
them." Judged by his treatment of so many things, of nearly everything,
how much must Sargent love life. One man can paint flowers and another
marble--Sargent paints everything; and, to paraphrase, almost it might
be said that what he doesn't paint isn't worth painting. But all this is
nothing if he never penetrates, as Meissonier and others never
penetrated, below the surface; if he gave no symbols in his art of
things invisible.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE MISSES WERTHEIMER
(In the collection of Asher Wertheimer, Esq.)
Portraits of the daughters of Asher Wertheimer, Esq., the
eminent art-expert. Mr. Wertheimer is himself the subject of one
of the best of Sargent's portraits.]
We like some of the subjects he has painted, others we dislike so much
that we wonder he has painted them; just as in life there are people and
surroundings to which we are attracted, and others from whom we keep
away.
To the realist by temperament the effect of the details of any scene
accepted direct from nature provide exciting inspiration, and he least
of all is likely to turn to decorative composition, which, with its
resemblance to a form imposed in verse, only aids in the interpretation
of the subject in proportion as it is imaginatively inspired. A painter
pre-occupied with the opportunities which any incident may offer for the
interpretation of subtleties, will often accept any scene from nature
and almost any point of view as composition. For the old formulas of
composition--of the time when composition was regarded as something to
be taught--went with a decorative conception of things, was in itself a
form of decoration. And whilst it has been said that all art is
decorative, it will perhaps be found that the naturalistic painter is
too much excited with incident to scheme much for a rhythmic
presentation of it in the frame. Such a canvas as Sargent's "Salmon
Fishing in Norway," lately exhibited in the McCulloch collection, a
portrait painted in the open, of a youth resting on the bank of a river
with caught salmon and tackle beside him, the centre of a skilfully
painted piece of landscape, is a case in point. The difficulties which
subjects have presented have often seemed Sargent's inspiration in
landscape: rocks presenting surfaces to the light with a thousand
variations; the wet basins of bronze fountains receiving coloured
reflections and the diamond lights in the fountain splashes; grey
architecture with its soft shadows, architecture white in the sun with
its cool blue shadows, like fragments of night in the doorways. It is
this mysterious sensation of light and shadow alternating everywhere,
changing the colour of the day itself as the day advances, which Sargent
meets. He is one of the few painters who have faced the noon. He has
this great command of art's slender resources, and he is matter-of-fact
enough to be happy at this uncompromising time of day, unbelieved in by
the workers, so inconsiderate to the lazy with its heat. The noon has
not many with its praises, and "all great art is praise." Painters have
got up at dawn to communicate to us its everyday recurring freshness, as
of an eternal spring, and has not evening always been the painter's
hour? Sargent has faced the noon, which demands so much sensitiveness
that the over-sensitive shrink. His brush has given it in water-colours
the finest interpretation it has yet received.