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Themajor events in Mr. Sargent’s life as we read them or hear them told to-day seem in no way striking or startling. He has moved along well-trodden paths, in a well-ordered career, responsive always to the teaching of his youth, and reflective of his social and intellectual surroundings. He did not wholly achieve art, for some of it was born to him and some of it, perhaps, was thrust upon him. He came to it early, grew up in its atmosphere, and was under its spell at an impressionable age. Which is to say that he is not a self-made painter in the Inness-Wyant sense, but something of a traditional painter in the La Farge sense. Training started him aright, but his great success is, of course, not wholly due to that. Genius alone can account for the remarkable content of his work.
He was born in Florence in 1856. His parents were Americans residing in Italy at the time of his birth. The father was from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and had studied medicine in Philadelphia, afterward remaining in the latter city to practise his profession. He had met and married a Miss Singer of an old Philadelphia family, and later they had gone to Florence tolive. Legally, therefore, the painter is an American, but the legal tie is about all that binds him to us. We like to claim him because he is a celebrity, but in reality he is an American only in a nominal way. He was not reared or educated here, he has not lived here, he has not fought in our quarrels or failed in our failures or succeeded in our successes. The greater part of his life has been passed abroad amid other scenes and other peoples. As a boy he travelled about Europe with his parents, speaking German as his first acquired language, if I report him aright, and gaining the bulk of his schooling in Italy and Germany. At eighteen he went to Paris and entered theatelierof Carolus Duran—at that time perhaps the most famous of the French portrait-painters. It was not until 1876, when Sargent was twenty years old, that he saw the shores of the United States. That was his first visit. He did not stay for any length of time, and what were his impressions of the land and the people we do not know. Several times since then he has been here for short periods, but one or another of the large European capitals has been his residence. Since 1884 his permanent abiding-place has been London, though he lived for a time in Paris, and just now (1918) he is again here in America.
It would seem then that however much pride we may take in Sargent’s achievements we can hardly be proud because he is peculiarly ourown. He is not American in the sense of knowing the land and the people and reflecting our life and civilization. Just as little has his birth in Italy made him Italian or his residence in France and England made him French or English. No country can claim him, no people can appropriate him, for in reality he is a citizen of the world at large—the manner of man we sometimes call a cosmopolite. If there is one place above another that he can be traced to and said to emanate from it is Paris; and Paris is no longer merely the first city of France. It, too, has become cosmopolitan—the centre of modern life and the gathering-place of the world’s knowledge, intelligence, and fashion. Sargent reflects its taste and its skill, but not anything else that is peculiarly French, not anything that smacks of the French soil. The accomplishments of Paris are his, but without the sentiment or the feeling that is French.
It is questionable if a man who is equally at home in London, Paris, Florence, and New York will or can have a very strong sentiment about any one of those places. He can hardly spend a winter in the United States and become vitally interested in democracy, and the next winter go to England and fall deeply in love with aristocracy. Nor can he live for a few months in Spain or Germany and penetrate to the quick the life and character of its people. The cosmopolite who moves hither and yon about theglobe hardly ever takes to heart the affairs and interests of those with whom he is temporarily sojourning. On the contrary, it is rather his attitude of mind that nothing is to be taken too seriously. To ruffle one’s composure with an emotion or to worry one’s self about a sentiment is the very thing he seeks to avoid. He accepts the facts as facts, concerns himself with the appearance of things, is a stickler for the refinements, and a great student of manners, methods, and styles. He quickly absorbs whatsoever is artistic or intelligent or learned, his perceptions are very acute, his knowledge and manner are polished to the last degree; but the strong feeling that, after all, lies at the bottom of great endeavor finds no utterance in his work, and the national beliefs that are really the insistent and persistent things in both literature and art are not the mainspring of his action.
So much may be said in a general way about the painter we are 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 Parisatelierof Carolus Duran in 1874, aged eighteen.
Carroll Beckwith, one of the earliest and best-loved of the pupils in theatelierand 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 themassierof 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 thenouveauhad much to unlearn, but Beckwith says the class was astonished at the pencil-drawings and the facility of the water-colors. Thenouveauwas 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 paintedEn 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 remarkabletruth 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 apoint 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 woodencolumn 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.
[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 seesthe 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.
pulitzer“Mrs. Pulitzer,” by John S. Sargent.
“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 hesees 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. Everyphysical 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 painterdoesgive 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 “PresidentRoosevelt” 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.
lily“Carnation Lily, Lily Rose,” by John S. Sargent.In the National Gallery of British Art, London.
“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 thanthe 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 perhapsthe 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!
carmencita“Carmencita,” by John S. Sargent.In the Luxembourg, Paris.
“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 concocterof 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 oneand 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 perhapsParisian 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 incompatiblewith too great frankness of procedure and demands a certain reticence and mystery.”[18]
[18]Ibid.
[18]Ibid.
There may be, probably is, considerable truth in that statement though I cannot for the moment get away from Rubens—one of the most direct painters in all art and yet a great colorist and a splendid painter of textures, especially the texture of flesh. Sargent is no such colorist as Rubens, but the lack is perhaps inherent in the man rather than in the method. At the same time Mr. Cox is right in degree. Perhaps the most engaging quality of flesh coloring, to return to the illustration, can be obtained only by additions and overlayings of paint which give the feeling of the coloring coming up from below to the surface. The direct method will not answer save in the hands of a Rubens.
But the end justifies the means with Sargent. Precision in drawing immediately begins to evaporate when one starts to knead or overlay the surface; and to weaken Sargent’s accuracy in drawing would be to imperil his authority and dispel such a thing as conviction. One cannot imagine it. If he should now deliberately try for subtlety or depth of color or seek to obtain a mysterious or illusory or enamelled surface, his friends in art would immediately declare him in decline and roll their eyes heavenward in despair. But fortunatelythere is no immediate prospect of such a thing. The painter’s inclination seems well settled, and neither his eye nor his hand has lost its cunning. On the contrary, since he practically abandoned portrait-painting more than a dozen years ago and turned his attention to landscape and effects of direct sunlight, he has been producing the most astonishing pictures of his career. The things that he sees and draws would have been thought as wild as cubist fancies thirty years ago. And yet they are the most positive pronouncements of elemental truths that he has yet put forth.
That does not mean that there is anything weird or queer about these later doings. They are merely appearances of form, color, and light presented with astonishing breadth, force, and simplicity. Sargent has never evidenced any liking for things queer. He is too intelligent for fads and fancies, too sane for mad movements in art. There is not the slightest indication of impressionism, futurism, or cubism in his work. The fashions have never interested him; but style—the best way of presenting a thought or theme—has no doubt been in his thought since boyhood. Perhaps it was his early acquaintance with the works of painters like Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese that led him to base his own style in largeness, simplicity, and directness. He could not have built on a better foundation.Whatever gimcrack or scrollwork bad taste may add at the top, there never yet has been any great art that did not have a plain and firm foundation at the bottom.
And in these days, when all painting seems going to the dogs with new and incomprehensible conventions put forth by first one group of painters and then another, it is a pleasure and a relief to know that there is a large body of the younger men who subscribe to Sargent’s formulas and methods. So far as I know he has never done any teaching nor had any pupils, and yet the influence of his works has been great not only in England but in France and America. For many years his method of handling has been held up for admiration in the schools and every new work of his shown in an exhibition has had its chorus of students to pay it homage. They could not follow a better master.
Sargent, Alexander, Chase, with many other painters who came to the front with the founding of the Society of American Artists, have helped form the new American tradition of the craft. As I have indicated many times in the course of these pages, that tradition is not based in any mere theory or fancy of art but primarily in the calm, cold practice of good workmanship. In other words, the craftsman first; the great artist afterward—if such thing may be. There could be no wiser teaching, no more enduringtradition. With it the painter can rise to what eerie heights he will; without it he forever moves on leaden wings.
It remains to be seen what the present generation will do in art. So many strange idols are set up in art places from day to day that one wonders if faith and purpose shall last. But whatever path the new group may follow or movement it may pursue, it cannot complain that its hands and eyes have not been trained; it cannot say that it inherited no artistic patrimony, was given no schooling, was taught no craftsmanship. The men of 1878 were perhaps handicapped by starting late and having to get their technical education in foreign lands, but the men of to-day have no such excuse. They can be technically well educated on their own native heath; they are practically not handicapped at all.
Will their success be the greater for that? Who can tell? There is always a tearing-down process going on in art almost exactly commensurate with the building-up process, and our country and its art may be on the threshold of such an epoch. Again, who knows? Many a generation has prepared and builded for its succeeding generation—prepared and builded apparently in vain. But whether the period is one of progress or recession it will not be the worse for the presence of competent builders. Thetradition of art is now deep-rooted. It will continue to grow and assert itself even though there be no historic sequence in its results. And so the thought is perhaps worth reiterating that the men of 1878 really have builded and prepared, with a will and in a way that will not soon be forgotten.
Transcriber’s Notes:Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.Perceived typographical errors have been changed.Repetative chapter headings have been removed.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
Repetative chapter headings have been removed.