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PAINTED BY JOHN S. SARGENT.

OWNED BY ROBERT GOELET.

FROM THE CENTURY" FOR MARCH, 1892.

PORTRAIT OF MISS BEATRICE GOELET.

knows thoroughly well what he is about and what his capabilities are, so that, while he searches the truth in his pictorial rendering of what is before him, and often repaints a part of his picture entirely in the effort to make it as perfect as possible, he works with confidence. He has never been allied with any revolutionary movements in art, and, while novelty appeals to him in things seen, he shuns all passing crazes or new doctrines. His feeling in art is of the most intense sort. Skill and accomplishment in every field excite his admiration, but his own creed is stable and unaffected by transitory influences. Possibly, in his youthful days, when he made pencil drawings from the heroic figures in the great canvases by Tintoretto, Titian, and Paul Veronese in Venice and Florence, and drew them again from memory to show his comrades in Paris the grandeur of line in these compositions which had so deeply stirred him, he laid the foundations of this stability. This quality has been of much benefit to him. Confronted by one difficult artistic problem after another, he has presented in every case solutions which, though sometimes more complete and more brilliant than others, have been uniformly sound-audacious sometimes, but always sane. «En Route pour La Pêche » was the title of a picture of modest dimensions signed by John S. Sargent, and exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1878. It represented fisher-girls at Cancale, setting out for their work with their baskets under their arms, and was bright and pleasing in color. It bore a look of cleverness that was unmistakable, but it was no more remarkable than the first picture of many another young painter of right education. In the same year, in the American gallery of the Universal Exposition, Mr. Sargent showed a competent, well-drawn portrait of a lady. At the Salon of 1879 appeared a charming little picture of a young girl among the olive-trees at Capri, and a portrait of Carolus Duran. The latter canvas at once attracted attention, and the jury of award voted an honorable mention to the painter. In 1880 came the «Smoke of Ambergris,» already mentioned, and a portrait of Mme. Pailleron, wife of the celebrated author of «Le monde où l'on s'ennuie.» In 1881 there were two portraits of young ladies, and these were of such merit that the jury decreed a medal of the second class, and so placed the artist hors concours. In these successive exhibits there was ample proof of artistic ability, and increasing evidence of individuality of style. In 1882 « El Jaleo,» which is now in the possession of a gentleman in Boston, and

the portrait of Miss Louise Burckhardt, which together made Sargent's Salon « exhibition,»> drew so much notice that his reputation took on a quality of generally admitted excellence, and his work was considered of such distinction that he was in a fair way to become, if he had not already become, a portraitpainter of fashion in Paris. About this time the studio in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs was given up, and a new and larger one taken on the Boulevard Berthier, on the north bank of the Seine. At the Salon of 1883 a very large canvas, called «Portraits of Children,»> in which four little girls were depicted in a spacious hall, evoked high praise from critics and public, more than ever confirming the opinion that Sargent's work possessed the highest sort of qualities, and that he was destined to become a great figure in modern art. In the summer of the same year at her country place at Houlgate he painted the portrait of Mme. Gauthereau, a celebrated Parisian beauty, and exhibited it at the Salon the following spring. It aroused a storm of disapproval. Mme. Gauthereau is painted fulllength, in a ball gown of black, the head turned in profile to our view, and, judged merely from a reproduction, the picture is seen to be one of exquisite style. It is certainly masterly in line and general disposition; that much may be seen from a photograph. Painters who have seen the picture speak of its marvelous technical qualities, and of the sensitive drawing of the head. Some of Sargent's friends speak of it as his masterpiece, and others declare that he himself so considers it. But it was severely criticized. The admirers of Mme. Gauthereau talked in the salons and clubs of the extremely poetic type of her beauty, and of the realistic rendering of externals only that this portrait, in their opinion, presented. There was an uproar about it, in fact, and most of the critics took the side of her partizans. The great artistic merits of the work were almost entirely overlooked. That spring Sargent went to London to execute some commissions for portraits, and events have so shaped themselves in his career that he has never since had a studio in Paris.

The village of Broadway, England, is about twelve miles south of Stratford. In 1885 Sargent and other artists were spending the summer there, and their days passed pleasantly with tennis and cricket in their leisure hours. Every day an hour before the sun went down there was commotion in the little colony, for with the last rays came the time when the effect was on for

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Sargent's picture of two little girls, children of the draftsman Barnard. They posed in a garden, and everybody lent a hand in lighting paper lanterns, and hanging them in the rose-bushes and shrubbery. Canvas, easel, and paint-box were brought, and all made ready. Then for twenty or thirty minutes, at most, the painter worked assiduously in the twilight. The whole day seemed to lead up to that brief period, so much did every one become interested as the picture grew and its beauty developed. It was finished, and entitled «Carnation Lily, Lily Rose.» Everybody in London saw it the next year at the New Gallery, and it was purchased by the Chantrey Fund, thus finding a permanent place in an English public collection.

The artist now found himself so successfully launched that he took a studio in the British capital, and spent the next two years in painting portraits. In the summer of 1887 he came to the United States (his second visit, for he had spent a short time in Philadelphia during the Centennial Exhibition in 1876) to paint a portrait of Mrs. Henry G. Marquand. This portrait, one of the most dignified and excellent in the long series of his works, was painted at Newport, and the following winter Sargent passed in Boston and in New York painting others. Then the painter went back to London. He returned to America in 1890, and spent nearly a year painting the portraits of Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, and Lawrence Barrett, which hang in the club-house of The Players; the «Carmencita»; the child portrait of «Beatrice »; and a number of others. In the autumn his father died in England, and he took ship from New York. The commission for the Boston decorations had been offered to him, but the order had not yet been definitely given. Just as the steamer was leaving he received the papers, and so it happened that he carried the commission with him, fittingly crowning a most successful year's work in his own country. In the winter of 1891-92 he went to Egypt, and settled down at El Fayoum, where he made a number of studies, and then returned to England. He joined Edwin A. Abbey at Fairford, where they built a studio of corrugated iron, suitable in its dimensions for the handling of large canvases, and during the next two years he worked there on his decorations, retaining his studio in London meanwhile, and painting portraits, among them being that of Miss Ellen Terry. The decorations were brought to Boston in the summer of 1895, and put in place in the library under the artist's supervision. Before returning to England in the autumn Mr. Sargent

made a visit to Biltmore, North Carolina, and painted there the portraits of Frederick Law Olmsted and the late Richard Morris Hunt for Mr. George Vanderbilt. The owner of « Biltmore » was happily inspired when he gave the commissions for these portraits of the distinguished men who created his beautiful estate, so that they might hang on his walls as memorials in time to come. Mr. Hunt's striking figure is fittingly portrayed in the courtyard of the house he built, and Mr. Olmsted's poetic face is so faithfully and sympathetically interpreted that his most intimate friends have nothing but praise for the work.

Mr. Sargent was elected a member of the Society of American Artists in 1880; he became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1893; he is a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, which holds the Salon of the Champ de Mars, and an associate of the National Academy of Design. When his election as an A. R. A. was talked of in London some time before it came to pass, he is said to have remarked that if it were necessary to become a British subject in order to receive this honor he preferred to do without it, as he would rather retain his American citizenship. He received the election, however, and will probably be made an academician in due time. His list of medals and exhibition honors is a choice one, but it will suffice to note here that, besides being hors concours at the Salon, he received a medal of honor at the Paris Exposition of 1889.

III.

A SPECIES of conservatism generally prevents the same enthusiastic praise being given to a work by a living painter that is so often freely accorded to the creations of men who have lived in the past. Books have been written about the works of Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez, and other great painters of portraits, but I fear that if I say that Mr. Sargent has painted one that deserves to be classed with the works of these masters I shall be thought to have overstepped the mark. Yet I feel sure that posterity will give its judgment in just about such terms. The apprehension that a living painter may, before he comes to the end of his career, fall far below the standard set by some single fine work that he has produced is in part the reason why critics shrink from unstinted praise of the work of their contemporaries. It is so easy to deride them if such a falling off occurs. But if the work justifies the highest word, is it not only fair to say it unhesitatingly? Few great artists have collapsed, but

VOL. LII.-23.

there have been many whose work has deteriorated, and never again reached a certain high plane once attained in some supreme achievement. I do not think that there is anything in Mr. Sargent's work since he painted the Beatrice to lead us to imagine that he may not again paint a portrait as perfect as this, or even a finer one; but all things being considered, and the factor of personal preference being admitted in the judgment, it is the one that I choose as the best, and if limited to a single canvas, the one upon which I should rest his claim to rank with the world's great painters. This little girl, with pale golden hair tied with a pink ribbon, in a gown of silk with stripes of pink and gray, her small hands joined before her with the finger-tips touching, and the cockatoo in his high gilt cage behind her, presents an adorable picture. That the portrait is delicate and harmonious in color, that the figure and accessories are painted with facile grace and sure precision, that it is captivating in aspect, and that it is complete in the sense that nothing may be taken away, changed, or added to-it is easy to say all this, and it is easy to support the assertions before the picture. To explain its great charm is more difficult than to analyze its merits. The charm seems to lie in the marvelous excellence of the painter's handiwork, expressing, as it does so perfectly, the sweet attraction of beautiful childhood. There are other ways of painting than the manner in which this picture is painted. There are certain more naïve ways of interpreting nature, some that appeal more touchingly, perhaps, by a sort of timidity perceptible in the painter's heart, and made seductive by the justness of the final rendering; but nothing better in this particular way could well be accomplished.

Quite different from the «Beatrice,» but potent in the quality of attraction, is the «Portrait of Miss- » (shown on page 176). A characteristic expression is here so rendered in paint as to be almost startling in reality. It is also one of the best examples of his work in composition, and there is great beauty of tone in the black satin gown. In the portrait of Joseph Jefferson as Dr. Pangloss,» the embodiment of a dramatic rôle, is a picture of live personality (see frontispiece). In that of Miss Dunham there are tenderness of color in the simple painting of the white draperies and sympathetic translation of character. We might go through the whole list of his portraits and find in almost every one of them some distinguishing quality. If we feel impelled to think of prototypes, we may

be reminded at times of Velasquez, at other times of Vandyke. The beautiful «Portrait of Mrs. Davis and Her Son,» sober and restrained in color, noble in conception, and painted with a fine swing of the brush, will suggest a comparison with the latter master, as the «Beatrice» does with Velasquez. Again Mr. Sargent turns our thoughts to the English school of the last century, as in the «Portrait of Mrs. Manson.» It bears general resemblance to the school, but a particular resemblance to none of the painters that belong to it. It is suggestive in style only, and not in treatment; for the loose drawing and conventional construction of the famous English masters have nothing in common with the firm yet graceful strength that marks this charming work.

Mr. Sargent's great success as a painter of portraits is no doubt due to the fact that, in addition to a technical equipment of the highest order, he possesses intuitive perceptions which enable him to grasp his sitters' mental phases. His cultivated eye quickly determines the pose which naturally and easily harmonizes the physical side with the mental, and his artistic feeling dictates unerringly by what attributes of costume and surroundings the picture formed in his mind's eye may be best presented on canvas. He rarely neglects to compose his picture; that is, not only to determine the lines of the figure, but also to fill the canvas and balance it. How much this part of the art counts for in portrait-painting every intelligent painter knows; but how many fail to appreciate it, how many are satisfied with a haphazard arrangement, that suffices to bring the figure within the frame, and leaves balance and symmetry to take care of themselves, may be seen in the numerous portraits in the current exhibitions, both at home and abroad, in which good intention and serious study are shorn of their force by careless composition.

Working with a mastery of his tools and medium surpassed by none of his contemporaries, and bringing to the interpretation of his themes concentration of ideas and facility of expression, Mr. Sargent is peculiarly well fitted to paint portraits. Though he may win high honors in other walks of art, we may hope that different ambitions will never draw him away from this field, in which belong some of the world's greatest masterpieces of painting, and in which he has so clearly proved his right to rank with some of the best of those who have made it bright with their glory.

William A. Coffin.

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