Sargent

“ Sargent threaded his way among them, unknown, yet feeling a greater responsibility resting upon him as he saw this evidence of the people's interest. They were looking to him to remove this murderer from their midst. As he went into the courthouse, he met Judge Houston. The old gentleman extended his hand, and for a second smiled encouragingly into the strained eyes of the young lawyer.
"You've been overdoing it, Sargent," he said quietly. "You should have rested. Too much reading of law paralyzes the brain." ”

“ But our past Society was the age of tragic frivolity, and Sargent was the Homer of that modish Odyssey. He illustrated the law of natural selection by making garments the main feature in his portraits. Under his brush the inner souls of his models withered away, while artificial surroundings and vestments emphasised in his pictures a condition of spurious passions and morbid excitability. Run through, mentally, the gallery of Sargent’s portraits, and you will see their anatomy wither under the robe of Nessus. ”

“ It is art of little carrying power that is exhausted upon some transcript of beautiful detail, colour of the glazes of a vase, a bunch of flowers. Sargent embraces difficulties one after another with energy unexpended. Physique, but never genius will give out. Energy of this order always goes with a generous, because very human, outlook; success on occasion being modified not through failure to accomplish, but through failure to respond. ”

“ Sometimes it has been disillusioned, tired, at other times all his energy has seemed gathered up into a tour de force. An intensity there is about Sargent's earlier work which we cannot find in some of his later pictures, sureness of itself has brought freedom and with it freedom's qualities, which we must take pleasure in for their own sake. ”

“ Beyond all question Sargent is the most conspicuous of living portrait painters. Before his eyes pass in continuous procession the world of art, science, and letters, the world financial, diplomatic, or military, and the world frankly social. To-day comes a savant, a captain of industry, or a slender, troubled child. ”

“ If Sargent's admirers do not claim that he sees all the colour there is in things, they claim for him that he sees colour and has the reverence for reality which prevents a tawdry emphasis upon it for the sake of sweetness of effect. ”

“ Can't we get away somewhere?"
The old fellow's keen eyes swept Sargent's face, reading there the signs of the recent struggle.
"What's up, youngster?" He bent a little forward. "What's a troublin' you? Your face is as red as a beet, and you've got a mighty bad glare in your eyes. Come on up to my room here in the Mansion House. I was resting very comfortable-like up there, till I saw some sort of a scuffle going on out here." Then with a quick intuition, he searched Sargent's face again. "It ain't possible you were mixed up in it!" ”

“ But had you become engaged to that dandy scoundrel I should have stopped any possible marriage by denouncing Sargent as a member of Tait's gang."
"Is he, George?" asked Lesbia quickly, and she remembered what Mrs. Walker had said in the drawing-room.
"Yes! Canning--his brother, you know--did not tell me everything, but he revealed a great deal. Sargent is in society and poses as a man of good family living on his fortune. He is well-born, but he has no money save what he obtains by theft." ”

“ We almost hear the teacups in the other room, and none of his sitters seem really alone. We feel they have left the life to which they belong to sit to the artist but only for an hour or so. The social world to which they belong will absorb them again. This world Sargent paints. Even in many of his single figures we are conscious always of its existence in the background. ”

“ IV No one has encountered the beauty of woman's face more casually than Sargent, no one has made us realise more fully its significance as a fact in the world. After all we had thought perhaps we were partly deceived in this matter by the illusions of poets and love-sick painters, but approaching it without ecstasy, art has not been closer to this beauty than here. I am looking at a half-tone reproduction of a lady by Sargent, wondering whether in the history of English portrait painting an artist has approached as closely to the thoughts of his sitter. ”

“ If this forecast is correct, the reason is that Sargent, though raised above his time, scarcely reveals in his portraits elevation of mind; he has the clear eye of the philosopher without his depth and breadth of vision; he has possessed himself of his age, and the age has taken possession of him. ”

“ They worked within a convention narrower than Sargent's, compromising with nature at the [pg 41] very start; a convention more beautiful than his, a garden, beautiful because it was confined and seen in an accustomed light. If things are beautiful at all they become more so when they are no longer unaccustomed, when they fit in with an old frame of mind. Sargent deals with the unaccustomed—in which at first perhaps we always see the ugly—whilst, as we have said, he does not destroy, as the vandalistic art of some painters does, the connection between the past and present. ”

“ Sargent looked up and saw the huge man of fifty years standing before him, suddenly timid, with his great, roughened hand outstretched.
"You ain't afeard to take it—is you? It's jest the hand of a man who's goin' to die soon. It can't do you no harm and it'll do me a mighty lot of good." ”

“ Walking on, he stood at last before the small jail. It was a one story brick building in which the sunken bars across the windows shone sombrely in the clarity of the night. Beyond its suggestion of imprisonment, there was a deeper and more lasting effect of utter dreariness and despair, for the building stood on a plot of ground in which neither a tree nor a shrub grew.
Without a moment of hesitation Sargent went up the path to the door, and lifted the heavy knocker. Its report rang out on the quiet night like some death signal, reverberating within, seemingly an hundred times. ”

“ Sargent involuntarily looked away, sickened.
"You damned cripple!—to insult me in the street!" Jervais shouted in his fury. "You can't fight like a man with a man. You'd claim you were not able, I suppose! But I demand satisfaction! I'll have it, too. There's one way to settle this thing—d'you hear? A way to settle this for good!"
"Very well—we'll settle it whenever you wish." Sargent wheeled quickly and walked from the crowd. ”

“ Only an imaginative woman makes herself up. A painter with more imagination than Sargent would enter into the spirit of her arts. Sargent's betrayal of his fashionable sitters has frightened many, but if anything it has increased his vogue; for above everything an imaginative woman is curious to know what she looks like to others, and a Sargent's portrait is intimate, unflattering, perfectly candid but perfectly true as an answer to her question. ”

“ In his twenty-third year he painted a fine picture of his master. Sargent was a musician as well as a painter; a man of great versatility, as if the gods and all the muses had presided at his birth.
PLATE--CARMENCITA
In this picture of the famous Spanish dancer Sargent shows all the life and character he can put into a portrait. The girl seems on the point of springing into motion. She is poised, ready for flight and the proud lift of her head makes one believe that she will accomplish the most difficult steps she attempts. The painting is in the Luxembourg, Paris. ”

“ In the fight against the Panama Mission, Sargent thought him “decidedly the most violent and aggressive speaker arrayed against the Administration.” [409] His passionate and impulsive nature frequently led to personal encounters; and in reaching an understanding of his irritable and sour disposition, it is profitable to know that just before entering Congress he had been wounded in the spine in a duel, and never afterwards knew a day free from personal discomfort. ”

“ Mr Sargent has not the distinctively artistic vision—he has, one might say, no visual passion at all, scarcely any visual predilections—he has rather the undifferentiated eye of the ordinary man trained to its finest acuteness for observation, and supplied with the most perfectly obedient and skilful hand to do its bidding. ”

“ One has heard a painter say, "I can paint those things because I love them." Judged by his treatment of so many things, of nearly everything, how much must Sargent love life. One man can paint flowers and another marble—Sargent paints everything; and, to paraphrase, almost it might be said that what he doesn't paint isn't worth painting. But all this is nothing if he never penetrates, as Meissonier and others never penetrated, below the surface; if he gave no symbols in his art of things invisible. ”

“ Ah! there's Sargent, he can be induced to do any work I desire him to perform. After election, he will have a position in the bank, for our cashier will surely die, his place will be filled by young Alden, and Sargent will be chosen teller. Alden should not be allowed to longer visit my daughter, but how can it be prevented? I shall at once make my wishes and Mannis's request known to my wife and daughter. Poor Belle! She is deeply interested in Alden, but what of that? Isn't my word law in my own family? Is not a man justified in guiding the destiny of those belonging to him? ”

“ There are other painters painting as carefully, faces as full of expression, who do not come near a likeness of their sitter. In what provinces close to nature are they wandering, since, [pg 36] striving to paint the face before them, they paint another face? We must not forget, in thinking of Sargent's greatness, that he unfailingly is in close touch with his sitters' expression, that is, almost with their thoughts. ”

“ Well—it ain't hurting you half as bad as it's hurting me—nohow. You've done me heaps of good—youngster." He still held Sargent's hand in his iron grip, "and some day you're goin' to be a big man. I could tell that by the sound in your voice when you was speaking to-day. That's what got under my skin. It's jest as sweet as a woman's and then again it's as hard as the devil's. Damn if I wouldn't like to hear you make another speech!" He laughed grimly. "But look here," with a quick movement and a glance at the pistol. "I sent for you to tell you somethin'. Sit down thar in that chair. ”

“ Charlie, you've washed the quail in the kerosene!'
"The witless, silly expression that came into that big man's face is only seen once in a lifetime," said Sargent in conclusion. "I've been fortunate, I've seen it twice; once on the face of a Texas sheriff, and again, when you shot a hole in the ground with your eye on an antelope. Whenever I feel blue and want to laugh, I conjure up the scene of a Mexican, standing on a wagon wheel, holding a jug, and a six-footer in the background, smelling the fingers of one hand and then the other." ”

“ Would Millais understand her temperament, and do her justice? Hardly. Sargent might. Yes, it must be painted by Sargent, this picture of a young girl in simple white silk dinner-dress, playing a harp before a hazy background; and the name of the picture should be “Portrait of Viscountess Carthew.”
Meanwhile, he was telling her that so far from boring, her talk had interested him greatly.
“I am honored by what you say,” he said, “when you tell me I do not seem wholly a stranger to you. ”

“ So by the divine right of things going to those who appreciate them, the rich American is now, even as Sargent paints him, environed by old French and English things and their associations. And in connection with the accessories in Sargent's pictures, might we not ask the question whether it could not be considered a test of the worth or worthlessness, from a point of beauty, of any ornament or furniture whether it would survive representation in a picture? How much modern stuff we should have to sweep aside! ”

“ He allows his sitters to wear their best clothes, but he never dresses them up; no, to please him they must wholly belong to the life of which they are a part, it is the attitude in which they interest him and all of us. We have then to think of Sargent not only as a painter, but as the maker of human documents—like Balzac, the creator of imperishable characters—with this advantage over Balzac, that all his characters have especially sat to him. ”

“ Some one had just ridden up on a horse and was trying to force his way through the crowd. Evidently there was resistance on the part of the listeners and voices were raised in protest against the newcomer's insistence. Then, several men pushed aside and made a path for the man, and Sargent saw a negro making his way slowly through the crowd towards him. As he drew nearer he recognized Jonas. Climbing up the ladder to the platform the negro did not hesitate one moment until he had thrust a letter into-Sargent's hand. ”

“ With the same earnestness and fervor which had made him the trusted military confidant of Governor Andrew, and later, a splendid commanding officer in the field, Commander Sargent threw himself into the work of securing this great need of the Commonwealth. The times were far from auspicious; business was suffering from severe depression, property values were feeling the apparent shrinkage incident to the approach to a coin basis, Comrade Sargent personally being among the foremost sufferers, while the strength of the Grand Army was from these causes constantly diminishing ”

“ Sargent's instincts are so tuned to the appropriate, having the tact which itself is art, that whilst in this kind of portraiture we do not question the grouping or the movement of his sitters as unreal, we do not accept it as quite natural. We instinctively know that in proportion as it is made to look too natural it would be unreal, untrue to the conditions which the painter's art actually encountered. Sargent, who permits nothing to stand between him and nature, will not permit such an inartistic lie to stand between us and the sincerity of his painting. ”