DOI issue:
No. 389 (August 1925)
DOI article:Manson, James Bolivar: Notes on the works of J. S. Sargent
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21403#0085
NOTES ON THE WORKS OF J. S.
SARGENT. BY J. B. MANSON. a
FROM the year 1882, when he sent
A Portrait from Paris to the Royal
Academy, to the portraits of George
MacMillan (painted for the Dilettanti
Society) and The Marchioness Curzon of
Kedleston, his latest paintings, exhibited
this year, J. S. Sargent's career was a
triumphal progress. 000
His development was singularly con-
sistent, and if he pursued a well-trodden
path, it had seldom been trodden so
successfully or marked, as with wayside
flowers, by so many happy achievements.
He does seem to have been fortunate in
getting a footing so speedily and so
securely on the path which he made
peculiarly his own and from which he
never afterwards turned, either to the
right or to the left. Unlike many notable
artists, he never had to experience the
necessity of unlearning what he had
laboriously acquired. In a sense he was
fortunate in his master, for although
Carolus-Duran had neither the masculine
outlook nor the brilliancy of his famous
pupil—there was always something of the
coiffeur in Duran's mentality—he was
moving in the same direction and taught
him a sound technique that was specially
adapted to the expression of Sargent's
particular intuitions. 000
The border line between painting that
is merely painting and painting that is
art is ill-defined and not easily perceptible.
Some painters, admirably equipped, re-
main only skilful craftsmen ; some are
born within the pale yet are so poorly
furnished with technical gifts that they
hardly ever achieve perfect expression ;
others there are who seem to force occa-
sional entry into the sacred domain by
the overwhelming weight of their natural
abilities. 00000
Sargent might be said to come within
this third category. He was lavishly
equipped with technical gifts ; he could
draw not only forcibly, but sometimes
with tenderness and feeling ; his sense of
colour was at least clean and harmonious,
and his power of design, if never original,
has been so happily demonstrated in
numerous tours-de-force as hardly to need
Vol. XC. No. 389.—August 1925.
mention. What he achieved was achieved
so triumphantly—with something of the
air of a grand seigneur—and with so sure a
sense of style as to place him permanently
in a prominent place among portrait
painters. Yet there were limitations—
rather on the side of art than of painting.
He followed and, one assumes, was con-
tent to follow a beaten track; he dis-
covered nothing new; he never spent
time on excursions into the less obvious
and less cultivated aspects of art like some
of the great impressionists—like Monet,
Pissarro and Degas—who were almost his
contemporaries. 0000
In this he was probably wise, for he
had a strongly definite and, in a way, a
simple gift, and he was able to develop
all its resources and garner all its riches
by following his own vein of gold to the
end. 000000
And so he became inevitably a great
portrait painter, while keeping unimpaired
the high quality of his work. 0 0
" master and miss ' vickers "
original sketch for " car-
nation, lily, lily, rose"
by john singer sargent, r.a.
(By courtesy of V.C. Vickers, Esq.)
79
SARGENT. BY J. B. MANSON. a
FROM the year 1882, when he sent
A Portrait from Paris to the Royal
Academy, to the portraits of George
MacMillan (painted for the Dilettanti
Society) and The Marchioness Curzon of
Kedleston, his latest paintings, exhibited
this year, J. S. Sargent's career was a
triumphal progress. 000
His development was singularly con-
sistent, and if he pursued a well-trodden
path, it had seldom been trodden so
successfully or marked, as with wayside
flowers, by so many happy achievements.
He does seem to have been fortunate in
getting a footing so speedily and so
securely on the path which he made
peculiarly his own and from which he
never afterwards turned, either to the
right or to the left. Unlike many notable
artists, he never had to experience the
necessity of unlearning what he had
laboriously acquired. In a sense he was
fortunate in his master, for although
Carolus-Duran had neither the masculine
outlook nor the brilliancy of his famous
pupil—there was always something of the
coiffeur in Duran's mentality—he was
moving in the same direction and taught
him a sound technique that was specially
adapted to the expression of Sargent's
particular intuitions. 000
The border line between painting that
is merely painting and painting that is
art is ill-defined and not easily perceptible.
Some painters, admirably equipped, re-
main only skilful craftsmen ; some are
born within the pale yet are so poorly
furnished with technical gifts that they
hardly ever achieve perfect expression ;
others there are who seem to force occa-
sional entry into the sacred domain by
the overwhelming weight of their natural
abilities. 00000
Sargent might be said to come within
this third category. He was lavishly
equipped with technical gifts ; he could
draw not only forcibly, but sometimes
with tenderness and feeling ; his sense of
colour was at least clean and harmonious,
and his power of design, if never original,
has been so happily demonstrated in
numerous tours-de-force as hardly to need
Vol. XC. No. 389.—August 1925.
mention. What he achieved was achieved
so triumphantly—with something of the
air of a grand seigneur—and with so sure a
sense of style as to place him permanently
in a prominent place among portrait
painters. Yet there were limitations—
rather on the side of art than of painting.
He followed and, one assumes, was con-
tent to follow a beaten track; he dis-
covered nothing new; he never spent
time on excursions into the less obvious
and less cultivated aspects of art like some
of the great impressionists—like Monet,
Pissarro and Degas—who were almost his
contemporaries. 0000
In this he was probably wise, for he
had a strongly definite and, in a way, a
simple gift, and he was able to develop
all its resources and garner all its riches
by following his own vein of gold to the
end. 000000
And so he became inevitably a great
portrait painter, while keeping unimpaired
the high quality of his work. 0 0
" master and miss ' vickers "
original sketch for " car-
nation, lily, lily, rose"
by john singer sargent, r.a.
(By courtesy of V.C. Vickers, Esq.)
79