International studio (14.1901)

American Studio Talk

EXHIBIT OF PICTURES, PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION “ VENETIAN BEAD STRINGERS,” BY JOHN S. SARGENT

(By permission of Mrs. J. Carroll Beckwith)

portraits, such as those of his mother, of Carlyle, and
of The Girl in White; unless it be the Bognor —
Nocturne, with its mystery of dusky blue and tremu-
lous vibration of pale luminosity. It is one of those
occasions on which he has rendered the very essence
of the scene, and where the essence is not merely
sensuous but spiritual. While The Balcony — Va-
riations in Flesh Color and Green — a group of
women in sprightly colored kimonas with a view
of water beyond — has engaging qualities of fancy,
the Bognor has the deeper quality of impression,
that puts one’s own imagination beneath the spell
of a silent, summer sea. In The Music Room, in
which it will be remembered that a lady in a black
riding-habit stands before a marble mantelpiece,
while a child in a white frock sits behind reading,
and the walls are ivory colored with curtains of
creamy chintz sprinkled with flowers, appear a fine
sweep of line, dignified treatment of the black, and
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tender qualities in the lighter parts, and the skill
with which these features, in themselves contrasting,
are merged into one gracious ensemble. The more
one studies the picture the more pleasurable is the
satisfaction it gives, but will it ever reach the mid-
riff? It scarcely gets beyond the region of elegant
dilettanteism. On the other hand, in The Black-
smith, owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,
a study in pale flesh, white, and brown, in which
the masses count in bulk as well as in form, there
is a subtle characterization, partly sympathetic, partly
cynical, that has the fascination of a human enigma.
It is a work of intensely personal significance.
Two little water colors, Blue and Silver— Chop-
ping Channel and Grey and Silver — The Mersey,
are little masterpieces of spontaneous impression-
ism, wherein scarce anything is said and yet so
much is stated.

The little gallery devoted to water colors was a