To go back to the matter of composition again. In his portrait groups,
where the mere fact that the sitters have to be grouped implies that he
is not dealing from the start with an impression direct, we find he is a
master of the finest composition, as in his group of Mrs. Carl Meyer and
children. And yet to one who will take not one touch with his brush from
what is not before him, such a view of his subject must be incalculable
in its difficulties.
The painter has never made a passage of painting the excuse for
incongruity. The arrangements in his pictures are always probable. It is
legitimate in many cases that they should only be imaginatively
probable. Any arrangement is probable in a studio, and affording
themselves too much licence in this respect some painters wonder why the
public are inclined to discredit most of what they do. The logical
quality, the sanity of Sargent's art is yet another reason for its
vogue; it has not the unreasonableness of studio production, it commends
itself to a world that perhaps is not wrong in assuming that the
artistic licence is applied for by those who are not sane. Sargent has
on occasion had to resort to all sorts of devices to obtain effects
and composition that he has desired, but he has always kept faith with
the public, and had the true artist's regard for their illusions. He
allows his sitters to wear their best clothes, but he never dresses
them up; no, to please him they must wholly belong to the life of
which they are a part, it is the attitude in which they interest him
and all of us. We have then to think of Sargent not only as a painter,
but as the maker of human documents--like Balzac, the creator of
imperishable characters--with this advantage over Balzac, that all his
characters have especially sat to him. It is how posterity will
undoubtedly regard this array of brilliant pictures. Of the people they
will know nothing but the legend of their actions and Sargent's record
of their face. We have undoubtedly felt that when a man of real
distinction of mind has worn them, the top hat and cylindrical trouser
leg were not so bad. They have indeed, under the influence of
personality, seemed on occasions the most august and distinguished
garments in the world. But there must come disillusion, the humour of it
all will some day dawn, but it will not be before a Sargent picture. He
has at any rate immortalised those things, just as Velazquez has made
beautiful for ever the outrageous clothes in which his Infantas were
imprisoned. We are reconciled to such things in art by the same process
as we are in life, in Sargent's case by the unforgettable rendering of
the distinction of many of his sitters.
X
It is the work of the secondary artist that is always perfect--of its
sort; for it will not accept its reward, to wit, the finished picture,
until the last effort has been expended. With the masters of the first
order, it is otherwise. We have said they paint as they think; who but
the amateur always thinks at his best? When a man's art has become a
part of him, it suffers with his moods. He always works, and his work is
always his companion, an indulgence. In his exalted moments it rises to
heights by which we estimate his genius, but which sensible criticism
does not expect him to live up to, any more than we expect a brilliant
conversationalist always to be equally brilliant. This is why a master's
work is always so interesting. That it has become so flexible an
expression of his own nature is its charm, if we really regard it as
art, and do not look upon the artist as a manufacturer who must be
reliable, who having once turned out of his workshop a work of
surpassing perfection, must be expected to keep to that standard or be
classed with the defaulting tradesman whose goods do not come up to his
sample. A painter makes or mars his own reputation by the care or
carelessness of his work, but it is his own work, and he is not under
any obligation to us to keep it up to a certain standard if it does not
interest him to sacrifice everything for that standard. Sargent's work
has been splendidly unequal. Sometimes it has been disillusioned, tired,
at other times all his energy has seemed gathered up into a _tour de
force_. An intensity there is about Sargent's earlier work which we
cannot find in some of his later pictures, sureness of itself has
brought freedom and with it freedom's qualities, which we must take
pleasure in for their own sake.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--MRS. A. L. LANGMAN
(In the collection of A. L. Langman, Esq., C.M.G.)
A portrait of the wife of A. L. Langman, Esq., C.M.G., who
served with the Langman Field Hospital, in connection with the
equipment of which for the South African War his father, Sir
John Langman, Bart., is remembered.]
It is frequently enough the weakness of painters to return constantly in
their art to some particular gesture or arrangement in which their
mastery is complete. This has not been the case with Sargent; instead,
his mastery has completed itself only through a constant encounter with
new difficulties.
A quality of all great art is reticence, something which will never let
the master, to whom it is not disastrous to be careless, be so; for
carelessness nearly always means over-statement, and exaggeration. Ah!
just the qualities if a work of art is to arrest attention in a modern
exhibition. A common question at the Royal Academy is "Where are the
Sargents?" by some enthusiastic visitor who has passed them several
times. No, Sargent's victories do not startle, winged victories do not,
but advertisements do.