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The Greatest Contemporary Portrait Painter” by Charles H. Caffin, World’s Work p. 4099-4118 ) That fashion should have selected John S. Sargent as its pontiff in portraiture is quite a curious phenomenon. In the first place, he is preeminently ‘a painter’s painter’; his technical method not being of the kind which usually commends itself to those who are uninitiated into the mystery of fascination of craftsmanship. It has nothing of the sleek finish and obvious prettiness that the public, and, perhaps, especially the fashionable public, seem to prefer. Moreover, Sargent is less than most painters a flatterer of his subject. His faculty of observation is as clear and impartial as a mirror, while the personal quality in his work, the enthusiasm which he experiences, is chiefly that of a painter presented with the opportunity of making an effective picture. When this is slight or lacking his enthusiasm clearly seems to flag. And, further, although he is the recognized portraitist of fashionable society, he holds aloof from social successes and has absolutely no taste or aptitude for those maneuvers by which many painters ingratiate themselves with the fashionable world. A self-contained man, of retiring disposition, he contemplates the ‘passing show’ with complete detachment and undisturbed scrutiny. The public, indeed, accepting the verdict of the painters, have persuaded themselves into approving it; are eager to be represented in a manner that is seldom sympathetic and oftentimes callously indifferent, and honor a man whose distinguishing characteristic is an unconcealed superiority to themselves. It is this superiority which is the key to Sargent’s position and the secret of his artistic ranking: a choiceness and tact of refinement, finely tempered, as sincere as it is instinctive. He owes it to his parentage and to the circumstances of his bringing up. His father was a physician of Philadelphia, who had retired from practice and settled in Florence. Here Sargent’s youth was spent in the intimacy of a cultivated home and of the most artistic surroundings, in habitual association with a permanent colony of refined and educated people, and in the atmosphere of a city which perhaps more than any other combines a prodigality of impressions with a singular resolve of spirit. The young man himself was extraordinarily sensitive to both kinds of influence; quick to absorb, withal of a modest, penetrating and reflective temperament. He had the aptness of his race and, either by nature or by cultivation, a habit of patient, thorough acquisitiveness to which the American student rarely attains. By the time that the scene of his studies was changed from Florence to Paris he has acquired some proficiency in portraiture by copying the old Venetian masters, and was already possessed of what remains lacking to many painters throughout their whole lives – a refined and exquisite taste. In Paris he came under the influence of Carolus-Duran, one of the most effectual of modern teachers and himself a portrait painter of distinction. His art-creed was in line with Manet’s, derived from a study of Velasquez; a realism tempered with pictorial motives. It involved, that is to say, no physiological insight, but was satisfied with the objective appearances; or rather, aimed to set down candidly the impression which the appearances had produced upon the painter’s mind, intent upon painter-like problems: the dignity of line, for example; the delicate differences of color value in the receding planes of the picture; the consequent rendering of atmosphere the placing of the figure actually in space and the vivid realization of a gesture or fugitive expression upon the face. With Carolus-Duran these motives were concentrated upon a characteristic fondness for sumptuous and dainty textures, so that he became a successful as a portrait painter of mundane elegance. Yet he was even more successful as a teacher, imparting to his pupils the craftsmanship of modeling by planes instead of by lights and shadows, encouraging a facile brush-work that, whether bold or sensitive, should be direct and full of meaning. Such was the master, brilliant, if superficial, to whom Sargent came. With quiet, unquestioning application he proceeded to absorb the master’s method, and so effectually that a portrait of Carolus which he executed during his student days proved that he had assimilated all the master could teach and was himself a master. Subsequently he visited Madrid and gained personal acquaintance with the works of Velasquez; and from this time his technique, as the individual expression of his own point of view, was matured and became, what it remains today, singularly accomplished, a marvel even to his fellow artist. Indeed, it is they alone who can adequately appreciate its merit, since they know by experience how wide a gap often separates the actions of the mind and hand; whereas it is one of the marvels of Sargent’s technique that the processes of perception and execution seem identical. In a sense, no doubt, they are. That is to say, what finally appears upon the canvas has generally been the direct and immediate expression of a powerful impulse; but meanwhile, below the assurance of the stroke may lie hidden the traces of many fumblings and uncertainties. For Sargent’s facility is not perpetually on top. His genius rather works like a high-mettled hound. Once in a while it may burst immediately upon the full scent, but more often works faithfully over the ground, trying here and there, now with a lead and then again a check, until finally it is hot-foot upon the trail and leaps to its quarry. It is an honorable characteristic of his that, although he is in such request, he does not hesitate to use the scraper, and shirks no labor of working over and over again upon a troublesome passage, never willingly relinquishing a canvas until it represents satisfactorily what he feels to be the best he can do with the subject. The result is that his portraits, unless, perhaps, in very rare instances, never show any traces of labor or fatigue; what is presented to the eye has the appearance of vigorous spontaneity; every stroke is vitally significant – to borrow a simile from Carlyle: each canvas is like a watch with a glass dial; one can peer through and see the works and fancy, at least, that one intelligently follows the movements. Or, again, it is a case of the conjuror, disdaining all subterfuge and so assured of his dexterity that he condescends to show you how it’s done. And, even while we comprehend the trick, we are dazzled by the baffling simplicity of the sleight of hand. Not that technique such as Sargent’s is to be regarded merely as a trick of hand. It is primarily the product of very clear, keen thinking. The artist forms a mental vision of the effect which he wishes to render, and then by analysis discovers what is its salient element, eliminating everything unessential, accidental of confusing, until in his mind he has reduced the appearance, as it were, to its lowest terms – the terms which are most suitable for expression – and then fits to them the expression most appropriate. Thus, the respective acts of mind and had are brought into direct accord – a process, after all, analogous to that of the mechanician when he constructs a new application of movement. Movement, also, and construction are conspicuous features of a Sargent portrait. The head has always constructive power and bulk, in most cases an extraordinary vitality of construction; the figure, whether exposed of clothed, is firmly and surely realized, and with a flexible ease of gesture. Such variety also! Notwithstanding the number of his portraits and the usually artless naturalness of the pose, it is quite remarkable what a freshness of arrangement each presents. The explanation seems to be that Sargent catches as if by intuition the characteristic pose and gesture of a sitter, even to the little niceties of difference that distinguish the ways in which two persons will assume a position practically identical. For two ladies may seat themselves upon a sofa; the direction of the bodies and the disposition of the limbs may correspond, and yet there will be some subtle shade of difference in the pose and gesture of each corresponding to her separate temperament or habit of body. It is this simultaneous apprehension of the specific trait as well as of the general bearing of a sitter that is so notable in Sargent. He scarcely peers below the exterior of his subject; seldom, if ever, penetrates its psychology, but at a glance and with generally unerring accuracy and completeness seems to grasp the tout ensemble that is presented to the eye. When, as in the portrait of Mr. Marquand in the Metropolitan Museum, the face is worn with time and graven by experience; when, in fact, character shows conspicuously in the lineaments and hands, Sargent gives us a memorable piece of psychological portraiture. So, too, when he paints George Henschel, an intimate friend, a musician like himself; while his pictures of children render completely the sweet spontaneousness of child nature [Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose]. Otherwise his portraits, for the most part, represent persons as they might appear at a reception or in the more intimate formality of an occasional visit; studies of manners, or at the most of traits rather than of character. Within these limits, however, they have a surprising reality of life and individuality. On the opening night of that remarkable exhibition of his works which was held at Copley Hall, in Boston, in 1899 [1], a reception was given, and I remember so well the effect produced upon the imagination as I viewed the scene from the elevation of a few steps which raised me a little above the guests to the level of the pictures. The figures on the wall seem to have stepped up out of the throng upon the floor; they were the same kind of people, conducting themselves in much the same way, similarly a la mode and mannered; representing a correspondence of types and the same sort of differences of traits. Indeed, to myself, a stranger in the room, the figures on the wall soon began to seem more real than the actual people below. Such a fancy was not altogether nonsensical, and may be compared with a shrewd observation made concerning Sargent’s recent portrait of William M. Chase, “That it is more like Chase than Chase himself.” This by a happy paradox hits off the quality of Sargent’s realism. It is not, on the one hand, a rigidly exact and formal record such as can scarcely escape being commonplace, nor is it, on the other hand, merely a loose resumé; but it represents an impression vivid, composite and concise, the net product of a rarely acute and cultivated observation. Moreover, it is thoroughly a painter’s one for interest in the personality of the subject should not obscure the masterly impressionism of treatment: the way in which the subject has been viewed as a picture, offering opportunities for painter-like skill in the rendering of light, atmosphere and draperies, tones and values; and the terse, piquant manner in which the character of figure, costume and accessories is indicated. What, for instance, could be more masterful than the rendering of the hands in the Marquand portrait? With a few bold, frank strokes not only their structure is suggested, but also their character, their nervous sensibility and the pathetic feebleness of age. Sometimes, it is true, the rendering of the hands is very far from this perfection. I can recall the portrait of a lady in which one of the hands, laid upon her lap, was so brusquely indicated that thumb and fingers were in an indistinguishable jumble. There was neither construction nor feeling. How shall one explain the fact? Was the portrait claimed before Sargent had thoroughly completed it; or had he overlooked the hand; or did he let it go, as being of minor importance in comparison with something else which occupied him more? This last reason, at any rate, seems to be adopted, rather as an affectation, by many portrait painters who have modeled their methods upon Sargent’s, until there comes to be some reasonableness in the question which one overheard at the Paris Exposition, “Why do Americans scamp the hands?” Sargent’s attitude of mind toward a sitter seems to be entirely professional; for the most part without sympathy, equally free from cynicism, simply and partly objective. In its peculiar intimacy it corresponds to the relations between physician and patient, or lawyer and client, except that these are privileges, whereas Sargent’s diagnosis and his analysis of a client’s strong and weak points a re published to the world. Consequently it is seldom possible to speak with perfect frankness of a portrait by him. One may be enthusiastic about its pictorial qualities, its masterly craftsmanship and truth to life; but approaching a consideration of the record of the sitter’s personality, one hesitates. It is so intimate, so free from evasion; hinting at weaknesses and failings, sometimes by what is included, at other times by discreet omission, that it would be insidious to describe in words the full impression received. One can, therefore, only cite examples in vaguest terms. I recall a portrait of a lady in a toilet of shell pink, [Mrs. Carl Meyer and her Children] ravishingly dainty, exquisite, sweetness itself, at a first glance. But her two children have come in; they stand with conscious constraint behind the sofa; the lady without removing her eyes from yourself, so evidently her admirer, lifts one hand to the children with that elegant gesture of maternal affectation which a fashionable woman in the presence of an outsider displays for the children to whom she is almost entirely a stranger. In a moment you detect the flaw in this exquisite blossom. Again I recall a group of famous beauties, and the fact that Sargent had dared to make delicate allusion to the wear of life upon the face of at least one of them[Painting?(2)]. Or again a lady of fashion, not too scrupulously discreet [Ada Rehan]. The hint was conveyed with consummate tact, without feeling of any kind, merely in the way of well-bred recognition of a fact. In these as in almost all his portraits Sargent would seem to be less interested in the individual than in the type which he or she represents. Holding aloof from society, he appears to view its members as an assortment of puppets playing their parts, simple or complex, or grace and elegance, weakness or sordidness. He is too far off to hear the words of the comedy or to care about the mainsprings of the action, but the gesturings of the actors and the hints of character on their faces reach him in a series of impressions. Then, when he is confronted with an individual, he finds in him or her a specimen of the type, and proceeds to a closer analysis, but of characteristics rather than of character. So from the point of view of character his portraits seem insufficient beside those, for example, of Watts and Lenbach. They lack the psychological insight of the German’s; their manner and spirit is French, brilliantly versatile and epigrammatic. Yet in grasp of facts as well as in mastery of style they pass far beyond such portrayals of modish millinery as Carolus and his kind affect, and equally stop short of the excessive actuality of Boldini. They reflect always his refined taste, as exacting as it is discreet. He has accomplished a vast amount of work, which, it may not be too much to say, is likely to be regarded some day as the most extraordinary series of personal memoirs that the history of painting has to show. A Personal Sketch of Mr. Sargent, By Evan Mills Mr. John S. Sargent is a typical example of the modern cosmopolitan man, the man whose habits of thought and life make him at home everywhere, and whose training has been such as to preclude the least touch of chauvinism. Such a man has become possible only during the last fifty years, and then only in the case of an occasional American. For the man born and bred in Europe of European parents must of necessity be influenced by national feelings that can not but make impossible any true detached cosmopolitanism. In the case of an American born and bred abroad, the only feelings that can possibly arise are those that come of cold selection; he is unattached to anything, and though living among and with the different European peoples, he never becomes one with them in sentiment or local bias. It would be impossible for one of the European states to produce such a man as has come from the happy combination of American birth and wholly European training. Mr. Sargent, although born of American parents and warmly claimed as an American in this country, has none of the traits that one would ordinarily look for as indicative of his nationality. He has spent in all only about a year in this country, having come here for the first time when about twenty years old. Born in Florence, first taught to speak in German, educated in Italy, France and Germany having studied art in Italy, France and Spain, and having married [?(4)] and settled permanently in England, he is thoroughly cosmopolitan. Judging from his speech, manner, gait and the countless little tricks peculiar to each country, Mr. Sargent appears to be a well-bred Englishman. He is phlegmatic, and anything but brilliant in conversation, lacking totally the verve and quickness of adaptability that make the typical American interested and interesting anywhere and in any company. Bashful and retiring, he has no presence, and cannot collect his thoughts when suddenly called upon. Physically, also, he would pass for an Englishman, being thick in the shoulders and bearing the marks about the eyes of full living. Since the time he was a little boy his every interest has been artistic, his mother having fostered in every way the talent he early showed for drawing. When he went up to Paris to enter the atelier of Carolus Duran, he took with him a portfolio of drawings that are still remembered by the men who were there at the time. Duran, though having a most masterly control of tone and color, was never strong in his drawing., and did not insist on it so much as is the custom of other teachers. The portfolio was opened, and the drawings examined with expressions of surprise on all sides; and although they showed a training that was totally at variance with his own principles, Duran was so impressed that the young American was readily and cordially received. One drawing in particular took the eye of the master—a study in pencil and water-color of some ivy trailing about a window, that, remarkable for the firm and delicate handling of the leaves and tendrils, showed that the boy who had done it was already a master of the use of the pencil. Because of the great friendship that later sprang up between master and pupil, Sargent for a training that today is all too rare, as Duran made him his assistant in carrying out some of the great paintings he had been commissioned to do for the French government [The Triumph of Maria de Medici]. His career at the atelier of Duran was short, as he soon found that he had learned all that his master could teach him. Before leaving, however, Sargent painted a portrait of Duran which still remains one of the most remarkable things he has ever done. Remarkable in many ways, the most remarkable thing about this celebrated portrait is that the style and manner there shown, although the work of a boy of twenty-three or twenty-four, are still those of the master. For though a most studious and painstaking and curious student of technic, forever traveling and seeing and studying the masterpieces of past times and the work of today, Sargent has never seen fit to change the manner that he developed so early. To be sure, his taste and his sense of color have developed greatly, his earlier work having had a tendency to be cold, yet what one may call his main thesis has remained the same. At various times he had been very much under the influence of one of the other of the different French masters, one summer even having followed Monet about, sketching landscapes and marines in his style, doing most marvelous things in rude sketches. All that he has learned, however, he has assimilated so well that one can not attribute any specific thing to the influence of any other master. Even while doing wonderful sketches in the style of this or the other man, he has always gone back to his chosen method for his serious and published work. Perhaps the thing that strikes most people in his work is what one may call the touch of malice. This was extremely prominent in his student days, when he was in the habit of drawing animals that were the greatest possible likenesses of the people he saw about him in the cafés and the theatres [5]. Though this feeling is still to be noticed in his work, it should not be thought to be the result of ill-will or of personal feeling, for, from the minute that a person has assumed the pose, Sargent loses all interest in him as a person, and becomes wrapped up in the possibilities that he presents for artistic presentation. This faculty of absolute detachment is perhaps the most marked trait of Sargent, the man. A tremendous worker, having on his recent trip painted more portraits than he spent weeks in this country [6], and having also in the same time placed and given the final touches to his decorations in the Boston Library, he lives and thinks only for his art, not caring overmuch for reading, and not being at all interested in society. In fact, his whole attitude is that of the curious and deeply interested observer of external appearances. Highly intellectual, neither his work nor his manner give much evidence of sympathy, kindliness or heartiness. This was noticeable in his youth, when he was thought to be rather romantic, for even then when a great reader his favorites were Shelley and Baudelaire, both of whom are more remarkable for their technical qualities than for any great definite human sympathy. This detached intellectuality he carries even into his recreation, for when tired to exhaustion by a day’s work he seeks rest in playing Chopin or Beethoven by the hour. Mr. Sargent is perhaps the most notable instance in our day of the man whose latent possibilities have been steadily fostered in the way that was ultimately to bring him to success. Born of rich and cultivated gentlefolk, and given a sympathetic and cosmopolitan education, he has never known worry in the way that so many painters have known it, and he has had nothing to stand in the way of his development. Backed by fortune, culture and luck, by hard and devoted work toward a single end, he has had the good or the bad fortune, as one may look at it, to have no personality and no history aside and distinct from that of his paintings. Notes
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| The World's Work was a section in Scribners monthly, an illustrated
magazine 1903 was a big year for Sargent's public exposure. He had successfully installed the second stage of his Boston Library mural project: the New Testament paintings -- Dogma of Redemption: Trinity, Crucifix, Frieze of Angels. And then exhibited a grouping of his protraits at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While across the Atlantic in London he had his first ever one man show of his watercolors at the Carfax Gallery. Two profiles were written on Sargent. One by Charles H. Caffin (to the left) and one by Evan Mills (which is below) |
