Sargent was born of American parents in Florence in 1856, and passed his
boyhood there. No art, it would seem at first, is further away than his
from all the Florentine traditions, and yet in the decorative colour
values, which give distinction to his finest works, he is the child of
Florence. The Renaissance attitude towards life itself was highly
imaginative, so into visionary art reality was carried. Consulting the
origin of all their visions, the Florentines returned imaginatively to
what was real. It is the beauty of reality which is the fervour of their
great designs, and as a humanist, Sargent is their descendant.
When, at the age of nineteen, he came to Paris, he was already, we are
told, an artist of promise, and he went to Carolus Duran with youth's
conscious, ardent necessity of embracing a fresh view of the world
altogether. The lighter touch of Carolus Duran, the worldly painting,
the lively art of things living, if a superficial art, was refreshing,
no doubt, to one accustomed only to the beautiful memories of ardour
expressed five centuries before. And superficiality, demoralising to the
superficial, could only give some added swiftness to a brush inclined to
halt with too much intensity whilst life, its one enthusiasm, was racing
by. He never experimented under Carolus Duran. He was beginning that
unerring sensitiveness of painting, which is only learnt by drudgery,
the almost luxuriously easy virtuosity, before the acquirement of which,
complete freedom of expression cannot begin, or sympathy declare itself
as from a well-played instrument.
An artist with individuality is careless of asserting it, and it is
perhaps just the one thing in the world which cannot but assert itself.
Those who strive for originality through the unaccustomed may without
hesitation be put down as those who are without confidence in their own
nature. The individuality of Sargent, as striking as any in his day, is
unself-consciously expressed. If we could strain from a work of art the
self-conscious, which is always the unnatural element, all that ever
gave it any force would still be left in it. Submitted to this test, how
much so-called originality would crumble, while the individualism of
Sargent still remained.
When leaving the studio of Carolus Duran, he painted a portrait of that
painter, a summing, as it were, of all he owed to him before he courted
another influence. He went to Madrid, there to study the living elements
of art in the school of a dead master, Velazquez, in whose life
encompassing art nothing has gone out of fashion--no, not even the
farthingale which the children wear. It was early in the eighties that
the Spanish visit ended and Sargent worked in Paris, already a man of
note, for the Carolus Duran portrait had been followed by "Portrait of a
Young Lady," exhibited in 1881, and "En route pour la Pêche" and "Smoke
of Ambergris." In 1882 he exhibited the _tour de force_ "El Jaleo," the
sensation of the season, and immediately afterwards the "Portraits of
Children"--the four children in a dimly-lighted hall, one of the most
well-remembered of his pictures of that time. Then came the wonderful
"Madame Gautreau." Paris was his headquarters but his visits to England
were frequent, and they grew more frequent as the time went on and as
his reputation grew in London. It was about half-a-dozen years after the
Spanish visit that he came to this country to live here permanently and
make his art our own. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy
in 1894, a Royal Academician in 1897.