(Self Portrait)
This is John Singer Sargent – an educated and very cultured American painter who made a reputable name for himself despite criticisms by painting many forms and styles of art – murals, portraits, watercolors, genre scenes – and and displaying it to the public world successfully.
When reading the simple art biography of Sargent, I was very interested in the kinds and styles of art John Singer learned about during his journey on to be a successful and respected artist. In May 1874, Sargent was taught under Carolus-Duran who urged his art students to just paint on the canvas suddenly instead of outlining or practicing any drawings first. This was to “preserve the freshness of the sketch in completed works”. It’s difficult to imagine someone going straight to the canvas and paint a whole picture without any idea on a piece of paper to assist him or her. If I were one of the students, I would take a bit of paint with my brush, put it on the canvas, be unsatisfied, and would have to start all over. Again and again.
Sargent later on went to gain reputation for his portraits and subject pictures when he started to submit his paintings when many people demanded and commissioned him to paint their portraits.
Henry James, the author of “Picture and Text” explains in great detail about some of the portraits of John Singer Sargent painted. He describes how Sargent was able to bring something alive from his paintings of the people who modeled for him. Sargent could paint reality and display it to whoever saw and admired the portraits. The audience could feel something and react well to the paintings. I felt like Sargent had portrayed directly what he saw when he was painting his models. One could say that his portraits were like photographs, but his brushstrokes conveyed much more than that and expressed a lot more.
A good example is Madame X, one of John Singer Sargent’s best-known portrait.
However, the portrait elicited criticism for Sargent’s “indifference to conventions of pose, modeling, and treatment of space”. What he painted was unconventional and different from the usual type of paintings in that time period. When I started to look and scrutinize some of John Singer’s paintings, I do have to admit that I had a questionable look on my face. The way some of the models had their hands positioned and what they were holding or what they were posed next to did cause me to be a little confused.
But like all artists, Sargent had a reason to pose his models as so which created some sort of reaction to the people who saw his work – regardless if it was bad or good.
Later on, when many Americans were eager to sit for Sargent, John Singer once again began to gain popularity for his portraits. He jumped over the obstacle of criticisms.
Similar to some other artists, like Thomas Eakens, John Singer Sargent wanted to do more than paint portraits. He branched out to mural paintings for institutions such as the Boston Public Library, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and the Harvard University library. He branched out even further to do watercolors. Later on, Sargent had a great reputation in painting not only portraits, but murals and watercolors paintings.
Karer See, 1914
His watercolor paintings, in my opinion, do not portray as much as a sense of realism than I received from his portraits, but Sargent creates more of a dream that sticks in the person’s mind after seeing it. He gives us just a little glimpse of the beauty of the scene he was painting.
John Singer Sargent indeed lived a most interesting life. A quote from your response that stood out to me was “However, the portrait elicited criticism for Sargent’s… What he painted was unconventional and different from the usual type of paintings in that time period.” I think that whenever anyone tries to do things against the conventional norm, critics go out of their way to criticize it, not knowing that in a matter of time this abstract new idea will become the new norm. This shows humanity’s resistance to change, keeping the status quo is the safe bet so many people gravitate around it.
I believe Sargent’s paintings were photographs, but not of reality. Instead they are photographs of what he sees or the reality in the “eyes of the artist.” Personally, I’m not a big fan of portraits. I love nature, so the water color painting in particular appealed to me the most in this post. If I’m not mistaken, the painting captures a time when the sun was setting. The sunlight illuminates the painting in a glowing light orange color. Contrast that with a bright blue body of water reveals the beauty of nature.