That was a fine article with a nice selection of JSS art from earlier in his career. One of my top 10 favorites, I've studied a lot about Sargent and have long admired his work. I've tried to mimic his style in my own painting before, but to no avail. I read an essay by another artist/educator one time that made me laugh - he told his students, "Try to admire Sargent's work for its own sake, but don't try to paint like him - you can't." I finally came around to this conclusion myself. It's very common in any artistic discipline to try to emulate those that one admires, especially on the journey to develop one's own style. I did learn from JSS the idea of representing detail as an abstraction of color and brush stroke, so that when you look at the canvas from a distance it resolved into the illusion of detail. He was a true master of that. I love to look at an original piece of his and walk up close as see how something like a necklace, which seemed so well defined at a distance is really nothing but fluid blobs and slashes and stipples of color.
Couldn’t agree more! I love Sargent, and only fully began to appreciate him as I got more and more practice with my own painting. I was going to say the same as you: Things congeal at a distance, so much so that if you stand where he would’ve stood to paint, it just looks unintelligible.
My favorite quote of his is, “Whenever I paint a portrait I lose a friend” or some such. There are stories of him mixing paint for a while, walking right up to his sitter, putting the palette knife an inch from their skin, and going back to keep mixing. His paintings look almost like acts of nature - it’s impossible to tell where he started, where he ended, what areas gave him issues. They’re just utterly complete. And it looks so natural and spontaneous, when in reality these were very slow and deliberate constructions.
He’s a real painter’s painter. Cezanne is like that too. Not that one can’t develop a very sophisticated appreciation for art without painting, but painting has a way of really showing, in high relief, just how special very excellent paintings are.
I went to this exhibition a couple of weeks ago, and it's the most comprehensive showing of Sargent's work I've seen. The sourcing work, especially from private collections, is nothing short of heroic.
That was a fine article with a nice selection of JSS art from earlier in his career. One of my top 10 favorites, I've studied a lot about Sargent and have long admired his work. I've tried to mimic his style in my own painting before, but to no avail. I read an essay by another artist/educator one time that made me laugh - he told his students, "Try to admire Sargent's work for its own sake, but don't try to paint like him - you can't." I finally came around to this conclusion myself. It's very common in any artistic discipline to try to emulate those that one admires, especially on the journey to develop one's own style. I did learn from JSS the idea of representing detail as an abstraction of color and brush stroke, so that when you look at the canvas from a distance it resolved into the illusion of detail. He was a true master of that. I love to look at an original piece of his and walk up close as see how something like a necklace, which seemed so well defined at a distance is really nothing but fluid blobs and slashes and stipples of color.
Couldn’t agree more! I love Sargent, and only fully began to appreciate him as I got more and more practice with my own painting. I was going to say the same as you: Things congeal at a distance, so much so that if you stand where he would’ve stood to paint, it just looks unintelligible.
My favorite quote of his is, “Whenever I paint a portrait I lose a friend” or some such. There are stories of him mixing paint for a while, walking right up to his sitter, putting the palette knife an inch from their skin, and going back to keep mixing. His paintings look almost like acts of nature - it’s impossible to tell where he started, where he ended, what areas gave him issues. They’re just utterly complete. And it looks so natural and spontaneous, when in reality these were very slow and deliberate constructions.
He’s a real painter’s painter. Cezanne is like that too. Not that one can’t develop a very sophisticated appreciation for art without painting, but painting has a way of really showing, in high relief, just how special very excellent paintings are.
I went to this exhibition a couple of weeks ago, and it's the most comprehensive showing of Sargent's work I've seen. The sourcing work, especially from private collections, is nothing short of heroic.