Ernest Henry Schelling, Drawing by John Singer Sargent (1912)

We continue our brief look at drawings by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) with this terrific drawing of Ernest Henry Schelling (1876-1939).  I am enjoying these drawings so much that perhaps we will come back to them after the holidays.

Schelling was an American pianist, composer and conductor.  He was principal conduct of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 1935 to 1937, and was also a composer of note.  He wrote for the piano, orchestra and chamber ensembles, but most of his work is now forgotten.  His major success was a symphonic poem, Victory Ball, based on the anti-war poem by Alfred Noyes, which was a success in early electrical recordings, recorded by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.  He was also the first conductor of the Young People’s Concerts of the New York Philharmonic, a tradition most famously carried on by Leonard Bernstein.

Schelling was married twice; he married Lucie Howe Draper in 1905, and remained with her till her death in 1938.  In August, 1939, he married his second wife, Helen Huntington Marshall, when he was 63 and she was 21.  A member of the venerable Astor family, Marshall and Schelling would remain together only four months: he would die of a brain embolism in December 1939.  Marshall was at his bedside at his death.

There are many things to love about this drawing.  First, look at how Sargent uses the paper itself as a drawing tool.  The paper has a high rag content, giving it more “tooth.”  This allows the paper to capture more of the charcoal dust.  (My former teacher, artist Ephraim Rubenstein, once told me that drawing in charcoal was “rearranging dust.”)  The charcoal also has a harder time of reaching the deeper ridges of the paper, which gives some charcoal drawings a luminescent quality.

If you look really closely, you can also see the paper-maker’s monogram (Michaellet) to the left of Schelling’s head.

Now, look at Schelling’s hairline, right over the bridge of his nose.  Sargent captures the flow and direction of his hair with a few very bold and very dark lines, the rest is just a dark mass (probably rubbed in with the artist’s finger), and lighter highlights were created by using an eraser.  On the right side of the picture, Sargent suggests Schelling’s hair against the dark background by simply applying the charcoal more lightly – there is no “hard” line to separate the figure from the background.  Simple, elegant and effective.

Look at Schelling’s jawline going down the left side of the canvas.  You can actually see one or two initial lines Sargent made before deciding on his final line; he also offsets the very hard line of Schelling’s chin by erasing the line of his head (probably by using his thumb – the mark looks about thumb-size).

Schelling’s mustache is more suggested than rendered.  If you look closely, you’ll see that it is a swatch of dark charcoal with a few outgoing directional lines to make it flow. 

Sargent makes the eyes limpid and alive by applying the eraser to pupil to create a sense of reflected light.  He also suggests depth and delineates the eye sockets at the same time with a single, strong line over each eyelid. 

He also manages to create Schelling’s costume with a few unfussy lines (notice how one shoulder is almost invisible). 

This is a little master’s class in how it’s done.  Anyone interested in drawing – as artist or aesthete – can learn much from a close examination of the work of John Singer Sargent.

A special Thanksgiving message tomorrow!

Drawing of Kenneth Grahame by John Singer Sargent (1922)

Though it takes us by complete surprise, this week is Thanksgiving; and with that means the holidays are upon us, ready or not.

I wanted to start the season with something that resonated with the child within us all, without yet fully embracing the holidays.  Who better than Kenneth Grahame to meet the need?

We here at The Jade Sphinx think one of the greatest classics of English literature is a novel for serious children and frivolous adults, the magisterial Wind in the Willows (1908), by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932).

Willows, like most of Grahame’s oeuvre, focuses around ideas of escape: Rat and Mole spend their boyish bachelorhood picnicking along the riverbank, simply “messing around in boats.”  His book the Pagan Papers (1893), is about the joyous sense of freedom he had in his youth (and, by comparison), the lack of such freedoms he had in adulthood.

This is not surprising considering Grahame’s tumultuous life.  He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.  His mother died when he was five, and his alcoholic father gave young Kenneth and his brothers and sister to the children’s grandmother, in Cookham in Berkshire.  Grahame loved the countryside there, and it was there that he was introduced to the pleasures of boating.  These years in Cookham would be remembered as the happiest of his life.

Following his years at St. Edward’s School in Oxford, Grahame wanted to attend Oxford University.  He could not do so, his guardians claiming that it was too expensive.  Instead, this sensitive and introverted boy was sent to work at the Bank of England in 1879, where he rose through the ranks until retiring as its Secretary in 1908.  The reason for his retirement was that an anarchist broke into the bank and shot at Grahame three times, missing each shot.  The incident forever shattered his nerves; he would move back to the country in an effort to find peace.

Grahame published his first book, The Pagan Papers, in 1893.  He would follow this with his first two great novels about children, The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898).  He would not write again until after marrying Elspeth Thomson in 1899.  They had one child, a son named Alastair (nicknamed Mouse), born blind in one eye and plagued by various mental problems.  Grahame would tell Mouse stories about the woodland denizens around them.  These stories would eventually morph into Wind in the Willows.

Sadly, the stories provided only a limited amount of succor to Alastair, who would commit suicide by lying on a railway track two days before his 20th birthday.  The train would completely sever the boy’s head from his body, and Grahame was called to identify the remains.  The sight would haunt him for the rest of his life.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was one of the greatest, and most prolific, of fin de siècle artists.  A gifted portraitist, Sargent was also painter of many magnificent landscapes, a champion draughtsman and watercolorist, and he also painted the mighty frescoes found in the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

We will look at Sargent’s life in a little more detail tomorrow, but for now: after a lifetime of painting some of the finest portraits of his generation, Sargent painted less and drew more as he grew older.  He found drawing a release from painting; providing him with much the same sense of freedom Grahame had sought all his life. 

Sargent was able, with a stick of charcoal, to capture the essence of his sitter in a few hours (sometimes … a few minutes), relieving him of the burdensome process of multiple sittings and coloration. There are dozens of Sargent portrait drawings … and after the holidays, we’ll look at a few more.

But now, look at how Sargent masterfully captures Grahame.  Drawn in 1922, just two years after the suicide of Alistair, here is a man who was shot at in more ways than one.  His face has an austere quality, which is not surprising as he was reported to be emotionally distant … but what Sargent captures more than distance is disguise.   Grahame’s mouth is large and sensual, his chin strong and resolute.  But both of these features are hidden by an enormous walrus mustache; these were not uncommon in Edwardian men, but one feels that Sargent knew that the point was concealment and not fashion.  Half of Grahame’s face is in shadow, as if he would hide from us, if he could.

In terms of technique, it’s amazing what Sargent can accomplish with a few simple strokes.  His drawing is never fussy or overdone; the scattered quality of Grahame’s hair is suggested with some powerful strategic strokes, his shirt and jacket survive as just the barest outlines.  The planes of his face have been roughed-in with some hatching on the side of his charcoal, but the wonderful (and evocative!) lower lids of his eyes have been caught out with eraser. 

The entire picture is a little master’s class in quick portraiture, and it tells us a great deal about the genius behind The Wind in the Willows.  A sad and tragic man is here, revealed by Sargent’s incomparable skill.

Another Sargent drawing tomorrow!

Stuff Heard in Museums

Sargent's Portrait of Graham Robertson

During our recent (too long!) sojourn, we had the opportunity to visit many museums and see multiple shows.  Certainly the finest show of 2015 was the overview of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and now traveling around the country.  (Look for this show … it is among the most beautiful things you will ever see.)

Aside from Sargent’s mastery, however, my multiple visits garnered some of the most amusing comments I’ve heard in my nearly 40 years of museum going.  Here’s a sampling:

Upon looking at Sargent’s masterful portrait of Graham Robertson (covered elsewhere in these pages), one Upper East Side lady-who-lunches said to her companion, “Let’s go see some art that is not as pretentious.”  (I hasten to remind you that it is she and others like her that keeps the museum industry alive.  Dark days, indeed.)

Standing before Sargent’s dramatic picture of the great Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, one teenager bent to read the explanatory card and explained (in a voice that carried all the way to the lunch counter downstairs), “F—k, this sh-t is old!”  This is, perhaps, the most incisive example of art criticism coming from young people today.

Again, two middle-aged ladies standing in front of the magnificent portrait of Dr. Samuel Pozzi (perhaps the most striking piece in the show), exclaimed, “he was a gynecologist!  How crazy was that!”

Not that it was easy to see many of these masterpieces – one had to brush aside a forest of selfi-sticks, or stand aside from people having their pictures taken beside the paintings.  Indeed, we don’t seem to look a pictures any more, we merely record that we were in their presence.  A dear friend and knowing art critic once said that cameras should be banned from museums, but that each and every visitor should have access to paper and pencil so they could sketch their own impressions.  Since the greatest threat to art in museums today is not theft, but defacement from visitors, perhaps this is not such a good idea…

In another visit to the Met, I took a break from the Sargent exhibition and strolled through the medieval collection, where a couple nearby examined each and every piece of armor and wondered what the dollar value of the silver would be.  That same day, in the Chinese wing, I overheard someone say, “Those people sure were smart.”

If all of this sounds elitist or condescending, it is certainly not meant in that light and not my intention at all.  At heart, it is a call for more passionate, more engaged, more aware museum-going.  A museum is not a destination to be seen, but a place in which to see.  In the right museum, you are witnessing the triumph of the human spirit over barbarism, the evolution of artistic technique both intellectual and spiritual, and connecting with something more primal an elemental than ourselves.  Museums are sacred places … shouldn’t we behave differently inside of them?

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, by John Singer Sargent (1892)

We continue our look at several pictures in the current exhibition at The Frick Collection, showcasing 10 masterworks from the Scottish National Gallery, with the picture in the show I loved most, Lady Agnew Of Lochnaw, painted in 1892 by your correspondent’s favorite painter, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).

Sargent was one of the greatest, and most prolific, of fin de siècle artists.  A gifted portraitist, Sargent was also painter of many magnificent landscapes, a champion draughtsman and watercolorist, and he also painted the mighty frescoes found in the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Contemporary art historians and critics – largely a benighted lot – are troubled by Sargent and his achievement.  His talent is too prodigious to dismiss, but he does not comfortably fit with either within the Academic establishment or inside the Impressionist movement, both of which were dominant at that time.  What Sargent was, in short, was his own thing, an artist unique to himself who managed also to wonderfully illustrate his own time.

John Singer Sargent was born in Florence, Italy, to American expatriate parents.  He would study in Florence and Paris, and live in London and Boston.  He was one of most celebrated artists of his time, famous for his “society portraits.”  Near the end of his life, he visited the battlefields in World War I France as an official British War artist.  His frescoes for the Boston Public Library occupied his later years; they are both magnificent and completely unlike his other work.

The painting visiting the Frick is a portrait of Lady Gertrude Agnew, the wife of Sir Andrew Agnew, 9^th Baronet.  She was born in 1865, and was all of 27 when Sargent immortalized her.  There is some irony in the portrait hanging in the Frick: in 1922, when the family hit financial troubles, they tried to sell the work to Helen Clay Frick in 1922.  Foolish woman – she turned it down.  Lady Agnew herself would die in 1932, following a long illness.

This is, by any critical and aesthetic yardstick, a magnificent picture.  It is easily the most striking piece in the exhibition – and is strategically placed in the center wall facing the viewer upon entering.  (The magnificent Constable, covered in these pages last week, is lost instantly – such is the power of the Sargent.)

Among the many component parts of Sargent’s genius was a deep and abiding understanding of the color blue.  It is the dominant color in his work, and he uses it to great effect both alone and in combination and contrast to other colors.  His use of blue here is nothing short of splendid, morphing through different shadings, contrasts with white, gold and pale red, and setting the mood of elegant repose.  The notion of Sargent the colorist is essential to understanding his sense of composition and how he saw the world around him.

Typical of the time, there is an Asian influence, consistent with the then-current Aesthetic Movement of things Japanese and Chinese.  This underscores that Lady Agnew is not only a lady of taste and refinement, but up-to-date with current modes of aesthetic expression. 

Let us look also at some of the things perhaps not blatant at first glance:  note, for example, how Sargent suggests the flesh of her left arm under the gauzy material of her dress.  Look at how the pattern on the chair is beautifully rendered without being stuffy or academic; much is suggested, but all that is necessary is said.

The pose is quite special.  Notice how her body is twisted to face one way, while the chair is adjusted to face the other – both creating the tension of a V.  (The power of this pose is underscored by how Lady Agnew clutches the base of her chair.)  And in the center of that V, Lady Agnew looks straight out at the viewer with a gaze frank, strong and enigmatic.  Last week we were looking at the portrait of Allan Ramsay’s wife; both Ramsay and Sargent are able to write volumes with the expressions of their subjects.  Where Ramsay relates a placid and affectionate beauty, Sargent paints a woman elegant, commanding and hypnotic.  She is fully aware of her status in life, her own intellectual and artistic attainments, and her own power as a woman. 

Finally, Lady Agnew holds a blossom in her lap, the white of the petals offset by her lilac sash.  Though literally draped in beauty, Sargent paints a figure of power and presence – a formidable woman indeed, and a perfect centerpiece to this splendid show.

Tomorrow: A special Thanksgiving message!

The World Loses Ray Harryhausen, Part I

Harryhausen animating the skeleton in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

It’s just about one month shy of the first anniversary of the passing of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) one of the Great Men of American Letters.  Sadly, we now mourn the loss of one of the great visionaries of American Cinema, Bradbury’s friend Ray Harryhausen.

In an age when the cinema is glutted with fantasy and science fiction films bloated by special effects, it’s perhaps difficult to remember that genre films were the exception to the rule, and that special effects were once, well …, special.

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) was born and raised in California, where he became friends with young Ray Bradbury, a fellow science fiction fan.  Like many of an entire generation of science fiction and fantasy buffs, the release of the original King Kong in 1933 was a seminal event in his life.  The mighty Kong fell not only from the Empire State Building, but he fell on Harryhausen as well, metaphorically smothering the boy and making him and a fan of stop motion animation.

The young Harryhausen went Kong-Krazy, and did all he could to learn how the effects of Kong were achieved.  It was then that he learned of Stop Motion Animation, a process by which models were filmed – literally one frame at a time – with slight alterations in posing.  When played sequentially, the animation effect simulated life – making steel-skeleton puppets covered with rubber, fur and miniature costumes come alive.  Harryhausen started building models and making amateur films while in his teens.  Footage of these early films still exists, including one where the young animator has envisioned the world of Venus.  A story that has passed into Harryhausen lore is that he appropriated his mother’s fur coat to create the model of a mastodon….

Harryhausen, in many ways, resembled the great studio painters of yore in that after showing early aptitude, he got to apprentice with an established master.  A friend arranged for Harryhausen to meet Willis O’Brien (1886-1962), the brilliant special effects pioneer who created King Kong.  O’Brien was impressed by Harryhausen’s experimental films, and urged him to take drawing and sculpture courses to hone his craft. 

Harryhausen started his professional career animating short films for science fiction auteur George Pal (1908-1980); the series was called Puppetoons, and specialized mostly in fairy tales.  He also worked with Frank Capra during World War II, mostly as a camera assistant.

After the war, Harryhausen went to work with his mentor, O’Brien, and together they made one of the most impressive fantasy films of the 1940s, Mighty Joe Young (1949).  The film won O’Brien his long over-due Academy Award, which is ironic in that Harryhausen did most of the actual animation while O’Brien focused on solving technical problems.

After that, there was no stopping Harryhausen, and he went on to create the special effects for some of the most celebrated and best-loved fantasy and science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s: It Came from Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, and Mysterious Island. He also produced many of his own films (such as Jason and the Argonauts and the original Clash of the Titans), and was always the guiding vision behind each and every film on which he worked.  This led to a unified body of work, similar in tone, outlook and depth of feeling.  No ironist and blessed with a sense of adventure and optimism, Harryhausen opened a world of the imagination to generations of movie goers and future film-makers.  When Harryhausen was honored with a special Academy Award, actor Tom Hanks told the audience, "Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane...I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!"

Like painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), there is little “color” or drama to Harryhausen’s life.  If Sargent’s epitaph was “he painted,” then Harryhausen’s could well be, “he created.”  He married late in life (in 1963), to Diana Livingston Bruce, and lived quietly in London and Spain, tirelessly breathing life into his magical puppets, and consequently bringing a little magic into the lives of all of us.  Ray Harryhausen loved fantasy, science fiction, hamburgers, his fans, and Diana.  His passing is a great loss to anyone who loves the world of the imagination.

Tomorrow: The Essential Ray Harryhausen Film List

Ray Animated an Elephant and Dinosaur for the Climax of

The Valley of Gwangi

Whistler on Art

Originally I had planned to look at various posters selling the latest Hollywood wares, but after 10 minutes of this exercise I came away so despondent that I opted for something a little more interesting.  Look for our take on film advertising at a future date.

On my night table is Whistler on Art, a compilation of selected letters and writings edited by Nigel Thorp.  It makes for interesting reading.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903) is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of art – and his work and influence remain polarizing to this day.  Whistler’s work is perhaps best seen as the bridge between the Academic tradition and Modernism.  Though the Impressionists presented a radical break from established artistic tradition, Whistler was never really a member of their order, nor did he always approve of the excesses of the Impressionists.  Whistler’s influence was long-lasting and deeply felt by painters as diverse as Henry Ossawa Tanner, William Merritt Chase and John Singer Sargent.

But more than his technique and coloration, perhaps his longest-lasting contribution was to the philosophy of art.  Whistler devoutly believed that a picture should always be removed from its narrative, and be seen purely as an arrangement of color, line and mood.  He thought painting should aspire to the quality of music – just as we know music is sad when we hear a funeral dirge without knowing that it is a funeral dirge, and pictures should inspire certain moods and impressions without the viewer knowing any ‘backstory.’  It is no surprise that he used musical terms for many of his pictures, including Nocturne, Arrangement and Symphony

.

This, I believe, is all well and good in the latter years of the Victorian era when Enlightenment values and a Humanist tradition prevailed.  However it was Whistler’s views, I think, that opened the door to the excesses of Modernism and the eventual degradation of art.  Surely, the thinking goes, if a picture is any arrangement of color, then mere squares, dots or smears of color are art, as well?  Without Whistler there could be no Damien Hirst, or Tracey Emin.  As Whistler wrote, Art should be independent of all claptrap – should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it, and that is why I insist on calling my works “arrangements” and “harmonies.”

And that, I believe, was the beginning of the end.  I’m sure if Whistler – a conscientious and industrious if sometimes technique-challenged painter – could resurrect himself from eternity, he would be appalled at how his ideas have been applied to sharks in formaldehyde, urinals, cow effluvia and floor sweepings.  In fact, the great man may have had to rethink his entire philosophy.

Like many who believed in Art for Art’s Sake, what Whistler really argued was that beauty was paramount, more so than moralizing or instruction.  Beauty is at the core of Art for Art’s Sake.  Later painters and philosophers, however, have taken the Art of Art’s Sake credo to mean that art is anything we wish it to be.  It is not.

Reading Whistler on Art is an at-times heart breaking experience.  Letters from his earliest youth show a sweet boy, in love with art and devoted to his family.  Even through his mid-twenties, Whistler seems like a gentle-minded man.  But something happened to his temperament, and the once-youthful sweetness drowned in bile, bellicosity and bitterness.  He became an argumentative, blustery and sometimes clownish figure, always in some kind of contretemps with whatever ‘establishment’ he felt slighted him at that moment.  Perhaps Whistler’s greatest failing is that he never left his emotional adolescence.  It was a template that would be slavishly copied by many Twentieth Century artists.

Here are some pearls to be found in Whistler on Art:  Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an Arrangement in Grey and Black.  Now that is what it is.  To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?

The imitator is a poor kind of creature.  If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer.  It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features; in arrangement of colours to treat a flower as his key, not as his model.

This is now understood indifferently well – at least by dressmakers.  In every costume you see attention is paid to the key-note of colour which runs through the composition, as the chant of the Anabaptists through the Prophete, or the Huguenots’ hymn in the opera of that name.

Equally fine, though I disagree with the sentiment, is: The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter – perfect in its bud as in its bloom – with no reason to explain its presence – no mission to fulfill – a joy to the artist – a delusion to the philanthropist – a puzzle to the botanist – an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

Interested readers can find some truly champion Whistlers in the Frick Collection in New York, as well as the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

A Medieval Christmas: The Procession

To celebrate today, the day of days, we look at A Medieval Christmas: The Process by Albert Beck Wenzell (1864-1917).  Our Christmas picture is pastel on canvas and rather large – 6x3’ 10.06.  Though it depicts a holiday pageant of the Middle Ages, the costumes seem more reminiscent of the era of Van Dyke.

Born in Detroit, Detroit, Michigan, Wenzell was a popular illustrator during the Golden Age of magazines.  Though his oeuvre is very much that of John Singer Sargent greatly watered down, Wenzell was a gifted illustrator in his own right. 

I hope your own Christmas procession this year was a merry and joyous one.  We here at the Jade Sphinx are taking some time off for the holiday and will return to you on January 4^th, 2012.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Wishes From Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Painted By John Singer Sargent

Any man who creates the Master of Ballantrae, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the palmy shores of Treasure Island must be a romantic.  All swashbucklers, both real and literary, have something warm-spirited and generous in their nature, and as such, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was not a writer to let the Christmas season pass unremarked.

Christmastime 1887 found Stevenson in Saranac Lake, mostly miserable.  The temperature was freezing, the weather was wretched and Stevenson found himself “grey and harsh.”  He was recovering from a lung ailment there, under the care of Dr. E. L. Trudeau, and writing much of his masterpiece, The Master of Ballantrae.  The bleak and uncompromising weather may have had significant influence on some of the gloomier set pieces of the novel, including the wonderful moment where the two brothers nearly kill each other during a midnight swordfight and the closing moments in a desolate and deserted American forest.

He also wrote many essays, among them, A Christmas Sermon.  Stevenson’s sermon is available on the invaluable Manybooks.net for download to your Kindle or e-reader, and can also be found in its entirety here:  http://www.thefullwiki.org/A_Christmas_Sermon_(Stevenson).  It can be read in a single sitting and comes highly recommended.

I think what is so refreshing about Stevenson’s Christmas thoughts is just how little Christmas is to be found in them.  Instead, Stevenson questions the motives of professional moralists, those who seek to control or condemn the behavior of others without taking time to think of the wrongs they do themselves.   In this age when questions of morality have taken down one presidential hopeful and counting, it is a refreshing change.  As Stevenson says, if your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say ‘give them up,’ for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

Stevenson is one of the great novelists of the 19^th Century; initially a popular writer who has eventually been embraced by academia and the literati (a process that can sometimes take a surprisingly long time.)  Readers seeking literary art along with concise and vivid storytelling could hardly do better than Stevenson.  Ballantrae (written in 1889 and already covered in these pages) is highly recommended, as are Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886).

Let’s close with a few more Christmas thoughts from the man who was both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavor springs in some degree from dullness. We require higher tasks, because we do not recognize the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unraveled.

To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer.

The Male Nudes of John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent Drawing of Architecture

for Boston Fine Arts Fresco

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was one of the greatest, and most prolific, of fin de siècle artists.  A gifted portraitist, Sargent was also painter of many magnificent landscapes, a champion draughtsman and watercolorist, and he also painted the mighty frescoes found in the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Art historians and critics have a little trouble with Sargent – his talent is too great to dismiss, but he does not comfortably fit with either with the Academic establishment or with Impressionist movement, both of which were dominant at that time.  What Sargent was, in short, was his own thing, an artist unique to himself who managed also to wonderfully illustrate his own time.

John Singer Sargent was born in Florence, Italy, to American expatriate parents.  He would study in Florence and Paris, and live in London and Boston.  He was one of most celebrated artists of his time, famous for his “society portraits.”  Near the end of his life, he visited the battlefields in World War I France as an official British War artist.

Two of Sargent’s greatest pictures remain The Portrait of Madame X (see below), first painted in 1884, and the portrait of Graham Robertson (also below).  Madame X created a furor upon his initial exhibition – one of the straps of the lady’s gown was slipped off of her shoulder.  The subject, society-figure Virginie Gautreau (1859-1915), never quite recovered from the scandal, while Sargent’s fortune was made.   The picture now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and it is a remarkable work.  Gautreau’s pale while skin, aristocratic hauteur and dramatic outfit are wonderfully realized by Sargent’s brush.  And don’t look for the dangling strap – after its initial exhibition, he painted it back in place.

My other favorite Sargent is the portrait of W. Graham Robertson (866-1948).  Robertson was a well-known dandy and patron of the arts, who later made a name for himself as a scenic designer and minor playwright.  With his languid look, elegant walking stick, and the long, stylish line of his coat, Sargent managed to sum up the entire Aesthetic Movement in a single picture.  (Oscar Wilde, High Priest of the Aesthetes, lived across the street from Sargent at the time; it’s not impossible that Wilde himself sat and amused Robertson while the portrait was painted.  At least, your correspondent likes to think so.)

One amusing story about the portrait of Robertson, which now hangs in the Tate Gallery, London – Sargent insisted that “the coat is the picture,” and Robertson posed for hours at a time in the blistering summer heat.  “What a horrid light there is just now,” Sargent said one day.  “A sort of green…. Why, it’s you!”  He then rushed Robertson outside into some much needed fresh air.

But one of Sargent’s most neglected bodies of work remain his drawings and paintings of the male nude.  Sargent had a particular gift for the subject, and worked closely with two models throughout his long life, his valet Nicola D’Inverno, and, later, Thomas E. McKeller, a bell-hop at a Boston hotel that Sargent met and employed as model for many of the figures in the Boston frescoes.

Aside from the supreme virtuosity of these drawings – many of which are merely “working drawings” that served as a basis for the business of fresco painting – is the fact that they still exist.  Society at that time mostly regarded the depiction of the male nude to be pornographic.  However, upon Sargent’s death his sister, Violet, donated many of these works to the Fogg Art Museum. 

Sargent has a special genius for the male form.  At once masculine and sensual, Sargent’s male nudes have an almost angelic grace, as if lithe and lissome gods came down among us.  As many of the surviving drawing were also created for his personal enjoyment, it cannot be doubted that these images were emotionally charged for Sargent, as well.

What was Sargent’s erotic life?  Scholarship seems divided on that issue.  Painter Jacques-Émile Blanche claimed, after Sargent’s death, that he was “a frenzied bugger.”  Others, including biographer Stanley Olson, believe that Sargent’s interior life was a mystery even to the painter himself.  In fact, Sargent was so driven by his art that is it possible that his entire emotional life existed only in his work.

Should we care about an artist’s private life?  His affairs, his politics, his relationships?  Well … yes.  We should not judge an artist’s output on his private life and convictions, but understanding the artist and his times often brings us closer to understanding the work.  For instance, it would be a shame to lose Wagner’s music because he was an insufferable monster of a human being; however, knowing something of his life, views and thoughts on mythology provide insight into creation of his Ring Cycle.  That Sargent may have been homosexual is interesting to speculate, but the evidence is inconclusive.  However, it is impossible to look upon his male nudes without appreciating Sargent’s sense of physical or aesthetic adoration.

Readers who want to see more of Sargent’s male nudes may want to find a copy of John Singer Sargent: The Male Nudes by John Esten.  Long out-of-print, it can be found on Ebay and Alibris easily enough, and it is also worth a trip to the local library.  The commentary by Esten, essentially a few pages of double-columned text, is essentially worthless, but the reproductions do justice to Sargent’s genius.  Perhaps the most comprehensive biography is John Singer Sargent: His Portrait by Stanley Olson, which comes highly recommended.