Studio: international art (77.1919)

THE PAINTINGS OF LOUIS SARGENT

PORTRAIT OF MARIE CASTELLANI
BY LOUIS SARGENT

scheme, Sargent has, I venture to think,
realized a chord of harmony in Alpine
scenery which has not been revealed before
in painting. It is not a literal rendering,
but an ideal; not a guide-book picture of
a Swiss scene; not a view that the man
with the coal-cart would recognize as the
one he saw when he looked over the wall ;
but something infinitely truer, insomuch
as it reveals the spiritual significance and
sublimity of one of those vast sanctuaries
of silence which, for want of a better word,
we call mountains ; and which, in their
godlike isolation, seem to our human
vision to be endowed with some of the
attributes of eternity itself. Few men in
landscape have used colour so boldly or
with such consummate knowledge and
disregard of convention. Hitherto certain

colours have had their appointed places in
pictorial representation from which no one
ever thought of departing. Thus the
cooler colours were only possible in the
distance, and the warmer ones in the fore-
ground. But Sargent often reverses this
sequence with most effective results. 0
Sargent's family is of French extrac-
tion, his father and several of his forbears
having been artists and engravers in
France, and one of them, Charles Sargent,
an inventor of international reputation.
This blending of art with science is notice-
able in Louis Sargent’s own personality.
It reveals itself in his technical skill,
highly developed colour-sense, and origin-
ality of view, as well as in the careful
attention which he pays to the preparation
of his colours and mediums. 0 0

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