Grand Central Art Galleries

“ Once in possession of the underlying facts, there should be no trouble in reading aright the salient, positive art, this art which by turns persuades and repels. Yet one cannot divine just why these high-bred women are so animated, or why the soldiers and statesmen are so emphatic, without first peering beneath the exterior. Though Sargent may himself remain dexterously on the surface, the spectator cannot. ”

“ One of the least conventional of painters, his art nevertheless remains adjusted to the tone and movement of the world in which he lives—surely a fine example of genius expressing its age.
“People complain that Sargent violates the secret recesses of human vanity, and brings hidden, because unlovely, traits out into the light of day; that his candor with the brush is startling, to say the least, and sometimes even perilous. He is accused not simply of painting his sitter, ‘wart and all,’ but of exaggerating the physical or moral disfigurement. ”

“ Genius alone can account for the remarkable content of his work.
“Sargent’s life has been the result of peculiar circumstances—fortunate circumstances some may think; unfortunate 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. ”

“ As is the case with all progressives, they were constantly on the watch for new fields to conquer and as America seemed particularly inviting, M. Grieve the youngest of the family, moved to New York and established the largest hand-carved wood frame factory in the world.
The Grieve of old still lives, and the sacred flame which he kindled is still kept burning by the single American representative of this great family of frame makers.
The American Grieve has progressed with the times. He has revolutionized the ancient art of his forefathers to conform with the demands of modern times ”

“ His art is neither Gallic nor British, it is American, and the chief reason why it is so different from most Anglo-Saxon art is because it is so superior, not because it is unAmerican. In any case the sense of motion remains Sargent’s personal conquest, possibly, even, his chief contribution to portraiture.
“In Sargent’s portraits women are in the act of starting from their chairs and men are on the very point of speaking. Here is a dancer whose yellow skirt still swirls in elastic convolutions; there stands a painter lunging at the canvas with sensitively poised brush. ”

“ Like a true painter, he sees a picture in everything he studies. It gives to each of his canvases a distinct aesthetic charm; grandiose in some, ravishingly elegant in others, delicately quaint in a few, but all of them variously characterized by grandeur of line, suppleness of arrangement, and fascinating surprise of detail ”

“ Such a theory would place him in measured agreement with Henry James whose definition of art has been quoted many times: ‘Art is a point of view, and a genius a way of looking at things.’
“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. ”

“ That endearing love of tone for its own sake is frequently absent. The vigorous outline of Holbein, the rich sobriety of Titian, or the permeating magic of Leonardo find but faint echo in the work of this modern innovator. With almost disdainful independence he has declined to repeat the triumphs of the great forerunners. In place of their ideals he has substituted ideals which are resolutely his own. ”

“ To say this is not to forget his indebtedness, where style is concerned, to other painters, even, Carolus-Duran. I think there is something of Carolus-Duran in his mere cleverness which like so much that is fluent and self-possessed in modern craftsmanship, could have been developed in Paris and nowhere else. The broad slashing stroke of Hals has taught him something, it is fair to assume; and the influence of Velasquez in his work is sufficiently obvious. Yet there is not in all his painting the ghost of what it would be reasonable to call an imitative passage. ”

“ All is restless, vivid, spontaneous. One and all these creatures vibrate with the nervous tension of the age. Other artists have given calm, or momentarily arrested motion. Sargent gives motion itself. With a technique facile as it is assertive this magician of the palette, this paganini of portraiture, has lured us into a new world, a world which we ourselves know well—perhaps too well—but a world hitherto undiscovered by painting.”
11 Art and Common Sense ”

“ 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 ”

“ So dazzled has the majority been by what is called the man’s cosmopolitanism that the real racial basis of his nature has been over-looked.... Sargent is American in his fundamental instincts. His adaptability and his very lack of marked bias bespeak the native complexity of his origin. It cannot for a moment be maintained that the French paint themselves as Sargent paints them, or the English either. ”

“ Sargent has his grip upon the actual, and while in relation to the world and people about him he is almost a recluse, he has delighted his imagination with the seemings and shows of things and with their material significance. ”

“ Sargent is not of the world in which he plays so conspicuous a part, but preserves an aloofness from it and studies it with the collectedness of an onlooker interested in the moving show and in its general trends of motive, but with an individual sympathy only occasionally elicited. ”

“ 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 sees the physical conformation more completely than others do. ”

“ Finally, from all these influences, Sargent has fashioned a method of his own.
“How shall one describe the method? It reveals the alertness and versatility of the American temperament. Nothing escapes his observation, up to a certain point at least; he is never tired of a fresh experiment; never repeats his compositions and schemes of colour, nor shows perfunctoriness or weariness of brush. In all his work there is a vivid meaningfulness ”

“ He has no successful living rival, but is in a class by himself. So true is this, that if I were asked to name the greatest living American, I should unhesitatingly name John Singer Sargent.
This Exhibition is for the benefit of the Endowment Fund of the Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, with which Mr. Sargent has from the beginning been in active cooperation. ”

“ The galleries as they are now open to the public constitute the largest and handsomest salesrooms in either Europe or America, and there is no other place where the work of so many American artists can be seen or where the exhibit can constantly rotate and yet maintain its high standard of excellence. ”

“ In the eleven months during which they have operated they have been visited by over 110,000 people. In this time it has been demonstrated conclusively that a sales place may partake of the excellence of standard, the beauty of installation, the atmosphere, the character, and the dignity of a modern museum and yet impart quite another form of message. ”

“ 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 it may. 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 he sees and knows; and to say of Sargent that he observes rightly and records truly is to state the case in a sentence.”
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OIL PAINTINGS 1 Portrait of Mrs. ”

“ CANVAS To the Artist what could be of greater value than knowing the foundation for his work is secure?
Devoe Canvas is manufactured from the finest raw materials and prepared by experts who with their years of experience are capable of producing Canvas as nearly perfect as possible for human hands to make. ”

“ Frank G. Logan OFFICERS
3 FOREWORD The Painters and Sculptors Association is a non-profit-bearing organization established solely to further interest in American Art, and to increase the sales of the work of the living American Painter and Sculptor. The Association is one of contributing artist members and subscribing lay-members, numbering about one hundred and fifty each. ”

“ There are representatives from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Rochester, Buffalo, Washington, D. C., Baltimore, Norfolk, Atlanta, Montclair, Newark, Cleveland, Canton, Dayton, Akron, Aurora, Chicago, Moline, Rockford, Joliet, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco. This makes of the Painters and Sculptors Association a national organization in its extent and far-reaching in its interest. This makes it a clearing house and not merely a local sales place. ”

“ Mr. John Singer Sargent has personally selected and approved all of the paintings in this exhibition and in choosing this Gallery he has greatly honored this organization.
An Invitation granting free admission to the exhibition to Art Students is being sent to all of the leading Art Schools; an admission charge to all others, to defray the cost of the exhibition, will be made.
49FRAMES designed by M. GRIEVE COMPANY
155 EAST FORTY-SECOND ST., NEW YORK
Branch: LONDON, ENGLAND
Specialists
in the
Framing
of
Old Master
Pictures
Pat. ”

“ Painting
Frames
Pat. 3215 Italian 16th Century
Pat. 3014 Flemish Gothic 16th Century
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Pat. 1877 Spanish 18th Century
Pat. 3455 Spanish 16th Century
Pat. 1751 Spanish 17th Century
Pat. 3095 Spanish 16th Century
51Two Centuries of Frame Making In the year 1721 in a small Flemish village lived Grieve, a famous maker of masterful picture frames ”