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PRO eee - Jofeieereey witteye eer, See : airy . “aby eles eye fececeiggeit 3 t - ‘ “te : tavehovnie TiS ow img pack pan ese ee elt e late} Sie ™ sie ral . 2 ra a Gre eae Vil PRESIDENT WILSON—GASSED—ROCKEFELLER—CATHEDRAL OF ARRAS—THE ROAD—BRITISH GENERALS— MORE MURAL PAINTINGS—19Q 1 8—1922 T will be remembered that Sir Hugh Lane had offered ten thousand pounds for a portrait to be painted by Sar- gent in aid of the British Red Cross. The offer was made in 1915, only a short time before Sir Hugh lost his life in the Lusitama disaster. No directions had been left as to what personage should be the sitter. Under these puzzling circum- stances the decision was referred to the Court of Chancery, which, after deliberation, finally determined that the trustees of the National Gallery of Ireland were entitled, as residuary legatees under the will of the deceased, to nominate a sitter and. to possess the portrait when finished. Acting under these instructions, the trustees then asked President Wilson to sit to Sargent. The portrait, finished in 1918, was exhibited at the Metro- politan Museum, New York, and at the Royal Academy in 1919. It was generally considered one of the least admirable of Sargent’s works, although it must be said that this opinion does not appear to have been unanimous. Sir Claude Phillips, 73 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE for example, called it a well arranged and satisfactory like- ness; and a writer for the Stwdzo considered it one of the best things that Sargent had done. It is now in its permanent home in the National Gallery of Ireland. The two portraits of John D. Rockefeller which were painted at about the same time, and which were exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Buf- falo, in 1918, were also very severely criticized, some of the reviews going to great lengths in disparagement. On the other hand, there were those who found the two canvases full of interest as studies of character. The Boston Transcript went so far as to place them among the great portraits of modern times. In the Corcoran Gallery at Washington there is a sketch portrait of Daniel J. Nolan, painted in 1917, and the history of the making of this head, as related by Mr. Coburn, is not without interest as revealing certain genial characteristics of the two men, the artist as well as the sitter. It appears that Dan Nolan, who was an expert restorer of pictures, received one day from Sargent the latter’s early portrait of Frederic P. Vinton. ‘The picture, made in the early eighties, had cracked badly, and Sargent wished to have it properly restored. ‘This Dan Nolan did, making a good job of it. When he delivered it at Sargent’s studio, he refused to take payment for his work, saying, “It’s a tribute from one great artist to another!” This gesture rather pleased Sargent. At dinner with friends a few 74 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE days later he told about the incident, and remarked that since Dan refused to be paid in hard cash he must think of some way of rewarding him for his services. “Why don’t you do Dan’s portrait?” suggested one of the artists present. “There is nothing in the world he would treasure so much as that.”? “Do you really think he would care for it?” asked Sargent. When the great painter proposed to Dan to make a charcoal head of him, Dan had the hardihood to offer an amendment, hinting broadly that he would prefer a sketch in oils. “Don’t you like my drawings!” asked Sargent. “You know I love them, Mr. Sargent,” was the reply; “but I am thinking of my descendants, and how your picture would be better kept for them. You see, my wife and J are both Irish, and in our house- hold we sometimes have family discussions. Now, if she should throw her shoe at me, and it happened to go through your charcoal drawing, it would be spoiled forever, but if it just dented an oil painting, I could always fix that up as well as I did the Vinton.” Sargent, who was not without a sense of humor, was amused, saw the point, and readily agreed to make the desired oil sketch. Across the top of the canvas is the inscription: ““T’o my friend Daniel J. Nolan.” In 1918 Sargent received an invitation from the British Government to go to the British Front in Northern France and make some pictures to be added to the collection which was already in process of being formed for the Imperial War Museum in London. He proceeded at once to the seat of war, 7) OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE where he passed a portion of the summer, moving from place to place in the quest for subjects. He made many studies and sketches, but few finished pictures. Among the localities visited in the course of his wanderings were Ypres, Arras and Poperinghe. The most important picture painted was ““Gassed”’, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1919,a work of monumental dignity and indescribable pathos, which Sir Claude Phillips called a very noble work, the great- est, on the whole, that Sargent had ever shown in England “Of singular beauty and singular impressiveness is this halting, broken rhythm marked in the timid advance of the shattered band which but an hour before marched out in all the elastic gayety of youth and self-confidence. .. . Reticent as the artist has been in the expression of supreme tragedy— perhaps, indeed, on account of this very reticence—he attains toa height of pathos such as has not been reached as yet in any war picture,” wrote Sir Claude in the Daly Telegraph. The other English critics were equally warm in their praise. The reserve and restraint of the work, its impersonality, and total avoidance of the sentimentality that nine out of every ten painters would have been irresistibly impelled to lend to such a subject, were among the rare excellences pointed out by the reviewers. Tardily these men recognized the artistic virtue of temperance, the value of understatement. “It is thus that Piero della Francesca treated battles,” quoth one of the scribes. As Sargent had not impaired the nobility of the human 76 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE tragedy in “‘Gassed”’ by overemphasis, so in his “Cathedral of Arras” he instinctively avoided sentimentalizing the tragedy of ruins. It was left to the observer to supply whatever com- ments the shattered monument seemed to demand. As usual, the critics touched two extremes, on the one hand finding in this canvas much of that “grandeur of departed glory which clings about the relics of ancient Greece”, on the other com- plaining of the coldness and objectivity of the conception. A singularly uncompromising sketch called ““The Road”, which was acquired by the Boston Art Museum, had the most novel and unconventional veracity and the peculiarly Sar- gentesque earmarks that differentiate his work from that of other painters. ‘This sketch was almost in monochrome, and, as the Bulletin of the Museum remarked, the hue of the earth seemed to have absorbed every fragment of other color. Asa first-hand historical document relating to the war this peculiar dust-colored impromptu note must have a value and impor- tance quite out of proportion to its modest dimensions and _ casual aspect. Another painting of this period was entitled “Shoeing Cav- alry Horses at the Front”, dated 1918. This work was sent to the Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, by the artist, early in April, 1925, only a few days before his death, as his third contribution to the galleries, and was exhibited at the third annual founders’ exhibition, in June, 1925. A brief letter from Sargent, notifying the manager of the galleries Tay OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE of the shipment of the picture, was postmarked “Chelsea, 11 P.M., April 14”, so that it is quite probable this was the last letter written by him. It was characteristically terse, and the closing paragraph announced that he was sailing for Boston on the eighteenth per steamship Baléic. There are many stories of the calmness and unconcern of the artist in the war zone. One describes him as wheeling a barrow of canvases through the ruins of Ypres, and subse- quently sitting down under an archway of one of the wrecked public buildings to make a sketch. Another glimpse shows him sitting under an umbrella and making ready to paint a portrait of General O’Ryan, of New York, amidst all the confusion and turmoil of military operations. In 1919, the Royal Academy chose as its president Sir Aston Webb, the architect. There had been some talk of Sargent as a possibility for the office, and, naturally, some debate as to his eligibility, for he was not a British subject. It is safe to say that Sargent did not desire the honor and would have declined it had it been offered to him. Because his col- leagues were aware of his feeling in the matter, the actual proffer was not made. Shortly after the close of the War he was commissioned to paint for the National Portrait Gallery, London, a very large portrait group of twenty-two members of the British General Staff. The work was undertaken on a commission from Sir Abe Bailey, Bart., for presentation to the nation. It was the 78 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE sort of undertaking that a man could hardly refuse to make, yet which in the nature of things could not possibly be an unqualified artistic success. According to a writer for the London Tzmes, it showed in its very restraint a much deeper understanding of the problems of wall decoration than ap- peared on the surface. This was followed in 1923-1924 by the three-quarters length portrait of President Lowell, for Harvard University, to which it was presented by members of the Board of Overseers. Boston and Cambridge continued to keep the painter busy on mural work. He had not completed the Public Library decorations before the commission for the decoration of the rotunda of the Museum of Fine Arts came to him in 1916, and this last-named undertaking was not finished until 1921. Four large oval panels, four smaller panels to fill circular spaces, four bas-reliefs, and four unframed bas-reliefs made up the sum total of this scheme of decoration. The entire series was in a much lighter vein than the Boston Public _ Library work, and gave an impression of gayety and ease, yet for the better part of five years the painter toiled with unre- mitting industry over this commission. He would often be at work by eight o’clock in the morning, from which hour until nightfall he was never idle. His attention to every minutest detail of the work was indefatigable. He spent many days in constructing a complete model of the rotunda; he made small- scale studies of every panel and innumerable drawings from fe) OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE life. In all ways he showed a characteristically tireless deter- mination to perfect his work by endless study, experimenta- tion and revision, with a view to bringing all its parts into harmony and unity. When the Boston art critics were invited to a press view of the mural paintings in the Museum, in 1921, the assistant director handed to each writer present a succinct typewritten description of the panels with a semiofficial explanation of the symbolism. It chanced that one of the minor panels, depicting three graceful female figures in dancing postures, was without a title. Some one asked who these personages were supposed to be. “Ah, that I cannot tell you,” said the assistant director; “IT asked the artist that same question myself, the other day, and he answered, ‘Oh, they’re three blokes dancing!?” So long as the group fulfilled its decorative purpose, the identity of the three blokes was of no moment to him. This was an interesting sidelight on the spirit in which he had conceived the Museum decorations, which were so much less compli- cated in their symbolism than the Library paintings. “Heroic, yet magnificently simple in design and execution,” wrote Jean N. Oliver, “the purity and nobility of the classic is combined with that modern and highly original style, in both pattern and color, which has always distinguished this great master. In the present case it seems as if he had never felt the fatigue of the effort; the figures appear to have evolved themselves in their proper places; yet when one con- 8o CAKNALION Weibel yer ROSE Courtesy of the Tate Gallery, London, and William Heinemann, Lid., London OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE siders the five years spent by Mr. Sargent in planning and perfecting this stupendous work, the magnitude of the under- taking can be somewhat understood.” The Museum rotunda work was followed in 1922 by mural paintings in the Widener Memorial Library, Cambridge, commemorating Harvard University’s participation in the World War. Two tall panels set in the round-arched spaces at either side of the doorway that opens into the library’s memorial room depict respectively the young soldiers of the nation marching to the relief of the Allies and the conflict between Victory and Death. In the first-named panel, the symbolism is carried out with the aid of some first-rate real- ism. The American infantry marches to the Front, a serried mass of gallant, boyish figures, in the sober-hued olive-drab uniforms and soft hats, extending, as they pass, the hand of help to the symbolic figures of France, Belgium and Britain, while overhead waves a big American flag and soars the bel- ligerent American eagle, looking uncommonly ferocious and formidable. There is something stirring in this half-allegor- ical and half-naturalistic work, with the manly youthful types of American soldiers, painted from life, for the most part por- traits, with the national traits of eager, fearless hardihood, confidence, patriotism, ardor. Their coming, tardy but not too tardy, to the aid of the tired and hard-pressed Allies, is admirably true to the historic fact and the spirit of the his- toric moment. Sargent had never done anything of this sort 81 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE before. The memories of 1917-1918 which are so close to the American heart are revivified by sight of this brave pic- ture; surely none can look upon it unmoved. The other panel is purely symbolic, and depicts the conflict between Victory and Death, struggling for ascendency in a hand-to-hand contest, the issue of which cannot be doubted. The young hero in the very hour of glorious triumph is grasped by the iron hand of Death, from which there is no possible escape. ‘In subject, in treatment, these are perhaps the most emotive works Mr. Sargent has made,” says Mr. Coburn. “Few of us fail to react spiritually in their presence. A slight understatement of the dramatic possibilities, a muting of the color passages, eliminates any sense of the vulgar and the commonplace.” Twenty-one charcoal drawings, studies for these mural paintings, were given to the Fogg Art Museum by the artist. The drawings include sketches of marching men, prostrate soldiers, studies of heads and hands, and the like. Many of these first-hand life studies have been utilized with very little modification in the finished paintings in the library panels. 82 VItl GENEROSITY—-ACUMEN——_NEW YORK SARGENT SHOW—— COM PARISONS—THE PAINTER’S JOB—AN ESTIMATE ARGENT’S generous interest in the work of his fellow artists has been mentioned. It was often manifested both in England and America, but his friendly aid and encouragement were sedulously kept from the public view. Frank Tompkins was one of the painters occupying studios in the Columbus Avenue building where Sargent had his workrooms for eight or ten years in Boston; and once in a while, when Tompkins’ door stood open or partly open, Sar- gent would drop in for a few minutes to look over his neigh- bor’s work and (if requested to do so) to criticize it. Shortly after one of these friendly calls, Tompkins was surprised by an unexpected visit from a representative of the Boston Art Museum, who asked to be shown a certain painting of a “Mother and Child.” A few days later the picture was bought by the Museum. Here was a case where the busy, preoccupied Sargent had gone out of his way to persuade the officers of the Museum to purchase a picture by a relatively obscure man; for unquestionably it was his advice that had led to their action. But never a word did Sargent say to Tompkins or to 83 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE any one else about his part in the transaction; and it was only by accident, some time afterwards, that Tompkins learned how it all came about. The catholicity of Sargent’s taste in respect of pictures is to be remarked. His admiration of Antonio Mancini’s work, and the use of his influence in extending the Italian painter’s vogue in England, have been spoken of. He was deeply impressed also by the genius of Ignacio Zuloaga, the Spanish painter, and, when the latter was about to send a collection of his pic- tures to America for exhibition, he, Zuloaga, confided to Sar- gent the honor of announcing him to the American public. Sargent wrote a few lines as a foreword to the Zuloaga cata- logue, in which he said: The strangeness and power of Sefior Zuloaga’s evocations might lead one to consider him as a personality quite unique and unrelated to any past tradition; as a creator of types and of asetting for them charged with an intensity of life strained to a pitch not reached before. But it is in this very excess of romanticism that his link with one of the two main tendencies of the Spanish school can be recognized. Realism, in which it is always steeped, is of course the dominant note of this school, but it has periodically thrown off into the realms of the imag- inative some such surprising offshoot as El Greco, the mystic, and as the magician Goya. In their hands this persistent, in- vading realism attacks what is most transcendental or most fantastic, and gives it a dense material existence. Although Zuloaga reverses the process, we may salute in him the appa- rition of a corresponding power. His material belongs to reality and is of the earth, earthy; but, as if whirled to another 84 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE planet, it seems to acknowledge the grip of new laws and to acquire a keener life from new relationships imposed by this great artist’s imperious will. This thoughtful and original bit of criticism gives us a rare and precious glimpse into the workings of Sargent’s mind, an impressive hint of his knowledge and acumen, and a welcome confirmation of one’s belief in his intellectual integrity. Note the mention of Goya and El Greco. Note the omission of any allusion to Velasquez. Sargent always turned to the unusual men; he always enjoyed the unusual subject; he realized that in the most realistic pictures there may be much more than stark realism; in this penetrating appreciation of Zuloaga he unconsciously outlined some of his own ideals. It is the more interesting because the naturalism and austerity of the art of the Spaniards had such a significant part in the early forma- tion of his own style. There was surely something in his nature which responded intuitively to the very qualities that he imputed to the Spanish masters. The Sargent exhibition of 1924 in New York placed him in the limelight, On the sides of the motor buses in the avenue his name stood out in great letters; for four or five weeks the Grand Central Galleries were crowded; the man and his art were the talk of the town; had he not been buried alive in Boston these eight or ten years past? And now, resurrected, was he not to be explained, evaluated, compared, and judged in the highest court? 85 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE The enterprising management of the new galleries over the railroad station made the most of the occasion, and furnished the press with many resounding superlatives. It is pleasant to record the fact that the show brought a tidy sum to the coffers of the new art society, for, with characteristic esprit de corps, Sargent turned over all the profits to the codperative associa- tion of artists holding the exhibition, capitalizing his prestige for the benefit of the endowment fund. The catalogue of the collection contained an appreciation signed by William Lyon Phelps, in which he called Sargent the greatest living American, and the foremost living painter in the world. “So far as one can judge the work of a contem- porary,” wrote Professor Phelps, “one is justified in predicting immortality for these compositions. Sargent belongs among the great portrait painters of all time, his pictures revealing the mysterious but unmistakable stamp of genius. In fact, everything he does shows this quality, which makes his paint- ing the envy of competitors and the pride and glory of Ameri- can art.” The collection, which was assembled by the artist himself, was retrospective, containing several early works which had not been seen in New York. Sixty oil paintings and twelve water colors, a total of seventy-two works, were shown, form- ing the most comprehensive exhibition of Sargent’s works ever held, with the exception of the Boston exhibition of 1899, where the total number of works was one hundred and ten. 86 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE Not all of the critics agreed with Professor Phelps’ esti- mate of Sargent’s genius. The writers for the World and the Herald, both of them partisans of modernism, voiced the sen- timents of the opposition. Their disparagement was both open and covert. hese men were broader in their outlook, and certainly far subtler and better informed, than their London predecessors of forty years before. They wielded rapiers rather than bludgeons. They did not by any means denounce Sargent as a heretic because of his disregard of academic formule; quite the contrary. They used satire and innuendo with the purpose of delicately insinuating that his drawing was weak, his color commonplace, his perception of character superficial. One of them went out of his way to hint that Miss Ada Rehan’s facial expression proved she did not belong to New York’s four hundred. Another proclaimed his belief that Sargent ranked lower than Cézanne. Casually, as if mention- ing a fact well known to all, one writer spoke in a tone of mild regret of Sargent’s “failure as a mural painter.” The inge- nious fashion in which such insidious doubts as to Sargent’s ability were carefully strewn amongst paragraphs of faint praise was, in its way, admirable. The other side of the question was ably upheld by the Tribune, the Times, the Evening Post; but it is quite possible that the hostility of the modernists had more to do with the success of the exhibition than any amount of favorable notice. There is no reason for refusing to attempt an estimate of an 87 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE artist’s achievement simply because he is of our own time. A good part of the apparent modesty of the critic who says “It is too early to bring in a verdict upon this man’s art”, is due either to mental laziness or the fear of making a blunder. Incompetence rather than propinquity should be blamed for most of the errors of contemporaneous criticism. Posterity will not be immune from mistakes. Those who take the trouble to read the various comments cited in the annotated catalogue will not fail to note here and there, with mingled resentment and amusement, the twaddle put forth in the guise of art criticism. Some specimens of this stuff might well be preserved as curiosities, and that is one of the reasons for in- cluding them here. The existence of writers capable of such pedantries and ineptitudes, and the fact that they were taken seriously by a credulous constituency, is a part of the history of the time in which Sargent lived and worked. Much of what was intended to be inimical really amounted to unintentional praise. Harry Quilter’s elaborate definition of modern French methods of painting, in his article on the Misses Vickers group, was virtually a fairly accurate description of what nowadays one would call good painting. And yet he was so sure that it was all wrong, in fact, worse than wrong, wicked, perhaps because it, was French, that he followed it up with the amaz- ing 20n sequitur, “What good is it? ” No human being, he cries, except a painter, can take any pleasure in it. He takes it for granted that the public to which 88 osvo1y) “uossahy “Pp uw “4 fo 02192110) SUaMAOM SSVTIOD NVILANGAA = OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE he addresses himself is as ignorant as himself; that painters alone can appreciate and enjoy good painting. It is the old story: what he does not understand he dislikes, and what he dislikes is shallow, pretentious, and untrue. This is the perfect flower of ignorance and provincial narrow-mindedness. So far as criticism has made a serious attempt to place Sargent definitely where he belongs in the hierarchy of great portrait painters, the tendency has been either to overestimate or underestimate him. It appears not unlikely that he will eventually take rank in an intermediate position, below the first-rate men, such as Velasquez, Hals, Holbein, Titian, and Rembrandt, and certainly rather higher up than the majority of the British painters of the eighteenth century. An interesting venture in comparisons, which was written some time ago by Joseph Simpson, R.B.A., and published in the London Weekly Dispatch, had these remarks in it: If his work be compared with that of Raeburn, Reynolds or Gainsborough, it will be found that he can hold his own with anything but their very best. . . . Of the three, Sargent has more in common with Raeburn. His work has the same virility and manliness, and is founded on a similar miraculous skill in handling paint that amazes the beholder. No painter paints with such certainty and directness. He may not be as great a colorist as Reynolds, but he challenges comparison in every other way. Reynolds, in my opinion, never painted anything better than the Misses Wertheimer. He [Sargent] certainly has not what is generally called Gainsborough’s “charm.” He is too masculine a painter, and his best makes 89 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE Gainsborough look a little superficial and pretty-pretty. There is less of the art of the chocolate box lid about his work. In short, he is generally as good as any of the three great English masters of portraiture, and, more often than not, better than Romney, Hoppner, or Lawrence. For an Englishman, and a R.B.A., that is saying a good deal. It might be interesting to pursue farther this game of comparisons, to marshal all the great names, and arrange them in the order of respective merit, but, as Harry Quilter would say, what good is it? The criticism which denies him the capacity of giving any- thing beyond externals would appear to imply that this limi- tation constitutes a serious defect. Many are the changes that have been rung on this theme. He “keeps us very near to, if not upon, the surface of things and people.” He “is not an inter- preter.” He “does not care, as a rule, to penetrate into the depths of the mental and emotional individuality.” ‘His affair is with shapes and external aspects, not with the mean- ing of them.” All this may be so, yet the inference drawn from it, that the portraits are superficial in character, would not necessarily follow. We are not to forget that the painter’s job is to paint the visible aspect of things, and that this applies with especial force to the work of the portraitist. Study the masterpieces of portraiture wherever you find them, and ask yourself if it is not true that the painter has set down what he saw without trying to do much more. Ninety go OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE per cent. of the so-called psychology for which we give him credit is a simple matter of good draughtsmanship. If the sitter be a demigod, we shall not fail to perceive the marks and signs in his countenance. See, what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command. .. . And if the sitter be a fair lady, who would wish to have the painter add or subtract anything to or from her beauty? Can art enhance it or explain it? “TI 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,” writes T. Martin Wood. ‘The expression of the face is determined partly by thoughts within, partly by light without. And it is as if with the touch of a brush a thought could be intercepted as it passed the lips. This is the nearest approach that thought has ever had to material definition. Thought is the architect of her expression; by accuracy of painting it is copied, just as the back of a fan or bracelet is copied—things so material as that. So, after all, thoughts are not so far away from the material world with which we are in touch; are scarcely less visible than air.” This is only another way of saying that good portrait paint- ing is not so much idealization as realization. It is purely a matter of observation carried to the 7th power, backed by on OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE training and temperament. If Sargent’s portraits had no other qualities than their vitality, that alone would be enough to give them a place among the masterpieces. They have life. Moreover, the best of them have the inestimable negative merit of reserve. Nor are they weakened by sentimentality. There is no attempt to edit nature. Sargent’s style, brilliant as it often is, may be likened to a pure and noble prose, devoid of flowery adjectives, and depending for its force upon the un- aided might of truth. He is concise, pithy, sententious. As to sympathy, he is unable to feel or show it with respect to all the subjects equally, since feigning is foreign to his nature, but when he has to’ deal with an unmistakably fine type of char- acter, one perceives at once that he responds to the unvoiced call of a superior personality. No one has painted childhood and youth with a fuller reali- zation of their charm. His pictures of children, lovely as they are, have no excess of tenderness, no effusive display of sen- timent, and in the last analysis this sobriety of feeling con- stitutes the most enduring element of excellence. His portraits of beautiful women—and fortune has been kind to him in this regard—seem all the more perfect in their allure because one is so certain that he never descends to flat- terv. Supremely felicitous are certain pages of his art on which he has given expression to the sheer pride of life in all its glowing if transitory exuberance. And not less happy are those pictures of the more spiritual types of womanly character in 92 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE which the best civilization of our time finds its choicest em- bodiment. While it would be too much to claim that Sargent never repeats himself, his disposition to make bold experiments and to seek new solutions of the problems of design which beset the portraitist is assuredly to be commended. His departures from precedent in respect to composition have been many; they have not been successful always; yet the attempt to avoid too well-worn conventions was in itself worth while. In his subject pictures he has shown preéminently the same clear-sighted objectivity that marks his portrait work. His early interiors with figures, the smallish gray pictures painted in Spain and Italy, such as the “Spanish Courtyard”, the “Venetian Interior”, and the “Venetian Bead Stringers’’, have as distinct a cachet of their own as a Vermeer or a Char- din. In other words, they are in their kind of a perfection that leaves little to be desired. Slight, sketchy, almost casual these scenes seem at first glance, yet as they are examined they im- press and charm us more and more, and in the end convince us that no painter succeeds better than he in attaining, through the unity of form and color, the very aspect of life itself. Sargent’s preéminent personal qualities were his genuine- ness, probity, seriousness, dignity, humility, and industry. He was always honest, sincere and simple. He took his art seri- ously, lived in and for it. His artistic conscience required him to give nothing less than the best that he was capable of giving. ae OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE In our day his modesty must be accounted a rare and beautiful trait. Adulation had no power to make him vainglorious. He made the most of himself, was utterly absorbed in his work, and found the days all too short for what he had to do. His Boston studio, in Columbus Avenue, was nothing but a workshop. There, in the early summer of 1924, he was toiling over the mural paintings for the great staircase hall of the Museum of Fine Arts, his last completed mural works. In his soiled working clothes, with a cigarette between his lips, he would greet the caller with a reproachful glance, as much as to say, ““Why do you interrupt me in the midst of my labors? ” One felt like apologizing for taking up his time. And he was not insensible to such an approach. “But you are welcome!” If he looked a little bored, it was because he felt that he was going to be obliged to talk about himself. He preferred to talk about other people—Henry James, George Moore, Winslow Homer, Pierre Loti, and other paint- ers and authors. It required not a little ingenuity to steer the talk back to John S. Sargent. Something like intuition warned one to use no flattery, but to stick to plain speech. No one could come into contact with Sargent without feeling that all the foolish little conventionalities of intercourse were futile; that he tacitly demanded a higher order of sincerity and candor, would neither give nor take anything else. He lamented more than once his bad memory. “I am not usually inclined to take any part in publications 94 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE about my work,” he wrote on June 6, 1924; “and doubt if I can be of much help to you in the matter you wish to deal with, as My memory is pretty bad. . . .”” Nevertheless he was able to answer many queries, and gave generously of his time and attention. In the matter of dates he was more than uncertain, but that is a common weakness. He had forgotten that Mr. —— ever sat to him for his portrait, though the catalogue of the Royal Academy proved that the work existed. Here again there is little occasion for surprise, considering the im- mense number of his sitters. Speaking of Henry James, one day, he mentioned an early book about America and the Americans which contained some severe comments. “They were the kind of remarks,” said Sargent, “that made some people say he was not a good American.” He went on to speak very highly of the book. In talking about such subjects Sargent invariably took the point of view of an American to the manner born, but not, of course, that of a chauvinist. When he spoke of the people who thought that James was not a good American, he smiled, and it was as if he recalled with amusement certain reflections of the quidnuncs who had in times past questioned his own one- hundred-per-cent. Americanism. The question used to be dis- cussed with a good deal of vigor: Was Sargent an American or not? No one who knew him had any doubts about it—not even when he called the elevator a lift, or referred to the charwoman. The roots of his nationality ran deeper far than 95 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE such surface signs as these tricks of speech; by sentiment and choice not less than by ancestry he was American to his finger tips. 96 Courtesy Grand Central Art Galleries, New York MRS. HENRY G. MARQUAND Collection of Mrs. Allan Marquand, Princeton, New Jerséy a! - “ Ps = te, 7 e. vs yee A “ “ ~ al ss } , . a a . { ad i> « = 2 ° i] 4 A e ‘ - as t My se + rita + - = = 5 IX PORTRAIT COM MISSIONS REFUSED——DEATH OF THE ARTIST IN 192 5—SERVICE IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY——TRIBUTES N the first week of July, 1924, Sargent left Boston for London, there to carry to completion the mural paintings for the great staircase hall of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and to undertake two or three portrait commissions that he found himself reluctantly obliged to accept. For about a decade now he had done his best to avoid portrait work, but in spite of all his efforts, so much pressure was brought to bear in certain influential quarters that he was virtually forced now and again to make exceptions to the rule. The world is inex- orable in its demands upon successful specialists; it will not allow them to do anything outside of their particular field of activity, and it insists that they shall continue to function in the same groove. The number of portraits painted by Sargent after the year 1915 is the measure of the extraordinary pres- sure put upon him to do the kind of work that he had vowed he would not do. He refused many commissions, however, including some from distinguished personages, and some for which immense sums were offered. 97 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE It appears that the Queen of Roumania was among the ap- plicants for sittings. In a letter from the artist, dated October 18, 1924, and addressed to Henry H. Pierce of Boston, Sargent wrote: . . . Lam sorry to have to adhere to my telegraphic mes- sage, and to repeat that I have entirely given up portrait painting, and have devoted myself entirely to another line of work for the last ten or twelve years. I hope it will be under- stood that my retirement from portrait painting is a thing of many years’ standing. I feel greatly honored at having been thought of by Her Majesty the Queen of Roumania, and regret very deeply no longer being able to do justice to her commands. It is easy to understand Sargent’s reasons for giving up portrait painting. He was tired of its routine, of the exactions and whims of sitters and the trivial faultfinding of their fam- ilies; and naturally he felt that at his age he was entitled to choose a more congenial and interesting if not an easier kind of work. Moreover, he frankly admitted, with his character- istic disparagement of his own abilities, that he was losing his old touch, his skill of hand, that remarkable facility of facture which had been the marvel of his early years and his prime. He was brave enough to realize this, and wise enough to act upon that realization. So many artists continue to produce until they have outlived the best periods, apparently without knowing that they have passed the peak and are going down- 98 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE hill. Sargent’s self-knowledge was exceptional. He could take a detached view of his own work. The mural painting that he was at work on for the Museum of Fine Arts absorbed him, and he disliked very much any- thing that interrupted it. Whether he was greater as a portrait painter or asa mural painter it is no part of our present purpose to decide; at all events, the mural work had this obvious ad- vantage—that it permitted and required invention, put a premium upon originality, fancy, imagination, concerned itself with abstract ideas and symbols rather than records of actual material facts. Years ago he said to a friend in his studio, ‘‘Women don’t ask you to make them beautiful, but you can feel them wanting you to do so all the time.”” He had been so long subject to the galling limitations and annoyances of portraiture, that the escape to more creative work, the freedom of it, was a most welcome respite; it was almost like a holiday. His sturdy physique had permitted him to accomplish an amazing amount of hard work for something like half a century, and his vacations had been few and far between; but it was now evident that he was weary. He was on the verge of the redoubtable threescore years and ten, after which, accord- ing to the psalmist, man’s strength is but labor and sorrow. It was his happy fortune to “die in the harness”, and his sudden passing was as he would have wished to have it. His death occurred in his London house, Number 31 99 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE Tite Street, Chelsea, in the early hours of the morning of April 15, 1925. He was found dead in bed by Clara Cozens, the house parlor-maid, who went to his room to call him at eight o’clock that day. As he did not answer her knock, she entered the room and discovered him lying in bed on his left side. His spectacles were pushed up on his forehead. It looked, she said, as if he had been reading and had dropped off to sleep. There was a volume by Voltaire on the bed. When he retired the night before he had been apparently in good health. Death came to him peacefully, in all probability in his sleep. Doctor Bronté, pathologist, who made a post-mortem examination, stated that the cause of death was heart failure due to fatty degeneration of the heart muscles. It was believed by the physician that his death took place between three and four o’clock in the morning. “He looked peaceful, just like a little child sleeping,” said the parlor-maid. The first press reports stated that the death was probably due to a stroke; later ad- vices, after the post-mortem examination, gave the cause as “hardening of the arteries, with fatty degeneration of the heart muscles.” He had been at work as usual in the studio the day before his death. He was engaged in painting the portrait of the Princess Mary and her husband, Viscount Lascelles. They sat for him some two hours, ora little more. It had been Sargent’s intention to sail for Boston, with his sister Emily, on the steamship Balzzc, on Saturday, April 18; and he dined at his 100 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE sister’s house, not far away from his own, on the evening of the fourteenth. Then he appeared to be in his customary health and spirits; he left for home about ten o’clock, walked home, according to his usual custom, and when the servants left him he was sitting in the library, reading. That was the last seen of him alive. More than one of his friends, on learning the circumstances of his death, must have thought what a happy fate it was “‘to cease upon the midnight, with no pain.” The funeral, which occurred on Saturday, April 18—the very day he had meant to sail for America—was kept as private as possible, in deference to the wishes of his sisters, who knew what would have been the preference of the dead man in that regard. The body, which had been lying in the private mortuary at the Necropolis station at Waterloo, was conveyed by special train to Brookwood, accompanied by the two chief mourners, Miss Sargent and Mrs. Ormond, and a few of the artist’s closest friends. From the unpretentious little chapel, where the simple services for the dead were con- ducted by the Reverend H. T. Burrowes, chaplain of the cemetery, the little funeral procession moved slowly to the grave, the two sisters walking just behind the bier. After the body had been committed to the earth, in a spot amidst a cluster of evergreen trees in the most secluded part of the cemetery, the grave was heaped high with beautiful wreaths, sent by the Council of the Royal Academy, the directors of IOI OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE the National Gallery, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Sulgrave Institution, the Anglo-American So- ciety of Painters in Watercolors, and other artistic and patri- otic bodies. Impressive memorial services were held in Westminster Abbey on Friday, April 24, at noon. This is said to have been the first time within the memory of living men that a service of this kind for an artist has been held in the national shrine. The ancient Abbey was well filled by a most exceptional com- pany, the transept being crowded to the doors. During the service the flag bearing the ecclesiastical arms was flown at half-mast on the Abbey tower. While the congregation was assembling the organist played choral preludes by Bach and Brahms, and Basil Harwood’s “Requiem A‘ternam.” The clergy and choir walked in pro- cession from the nave to their seats, singing Croft’s setting of the opening sentences of the burial service. The service was conducted by the Sub-Dean, Canon Carnegie, assisted by Archdeacon Charles, and the Precentor, Reverend L. H. Nixon. Following the psalm, “Lord, Thou hast been our refuge”’, the choir sang Bridge’s setting of ‘Tennyson’s ‘‘Cross- ing the Bar” as a hymn. The lesson, from the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, ““And I saw a new heaven and a new earth”, was beautifully read, and was followed by Wesley’s anthem, “He will swallow up death in victory.” After prayers the congregation joined in the hymn, “For all the saints who 102 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE from their labors rest.” Then came another brief prayer, beseeching for the departed “light and rest, peace and refresh- ment, joy and consolation.”” —The Sub-Dean pronounced the blessing, and the service closed with the Dead March from Saul.” During the service it grew dark, April clouds obscuring the sun; the lights were turned on in the Abbey; but in a few minutes the sun emerged again and shone brightly through the beautiful chancel windows. “The sight of this unusual audience, with its black costumes and its many silver heads, in the conflicting lights, gave an accent to it all that was somehow reminiscent of Sargent,”’ wrote the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. The family mourners sat in the South Lantern. The near relatives who attended included Miss Sargent, the Honorable Mrs. Ewen Montagu, Mr. and Mrs. Ormond, and Mr. and Mrs. Hugo Pitman. In the choir Sir Frank Dicksee, P.R.A., and many other Academicians had seats. The Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Davidson took places near the President of the Academy. Sir Philip Sassoon, who is a trustee of the National Gallery, represented the Government, and Mr. Boylston Beal attended from the United States Embassy. Sir Charles Holmes, director of the National Gallery, and Mr. J. D. Milner, director of the National Portrait Gallery, were present, and among the other bodies represented were the Royal Cambrian Academy, the Royal Society of Painters in 103 OUTLINE SKETCH OF SARGENT’S LIFE Watercolors, the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, the British School at Rome, and the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Among the congregation, in addition to those already men- tioned, were Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, the Countess of Gosford, Honorable Patrick Acheson, Viscount Dillon, Lord D’Abernon, Lord and Lady Lawrence of Kingsgate, Honorable Lady Mallet, Lady Horner, Lady Leslie, Lady Cunliffe, Lady Cope, Lady Low, Sir Frederick and Lady Pollock, Edith Lady Playfair, Lady Busk, Sir Frank Swetten- ham, Lady Prothero, Sir Brumwell Thomas, General Sir Ian Hamilton, Lady Frampton, Lady Burnet, Lady Short, Mr. Augustine Birrell, Mr. C. H. Collins Baker (representing the New English Art Club), Mr. Lewis Hind, Mr. Philip de Laszlo, Mr. Croal Thomson, Mr. Wilson Steer, Mr. Evelyn Shaw, Mr. Frederick Ruch, Alderman H. A. Cole (repre- senting the Liverpool Libraries, Museums and Arts Commit- tee), and many personages known to the world through Sargent’s portraits. The Royal Academy was represented by all of its officers and a noteworthy number of Academicians and associates. Besides the president, there were the keeper, Mr. Charles Sims; the treasurer, Sir Frank Short; and the secretary, Mr. W. R. M. Lamb, with the following Academicians: Mr. Walter Ouless, Sir Luke Fildes, Sir Hamo Thornycroft, Sir David Murray, Mr. Solomon J. Solomon, Mr. W. L. Wylie, 104 MRS. EDWARD D. BOIT Collection of the Misses Boit, Paris Reproduced from the photogravure by courtesy of William Heinemann, Ltd., London elk ot ak ° 7 : " } @ - 7 ¥ i ; ‘ j = : : > i at ‘ y ‘ D4 ’ iS ‘ 7 7 : a r ‘ >) , ow ion 7 , _" y a ? a pare : ~~ ¥ A 4 ’ > ¢ : ba Pe a : bh ae ie — / 7 7 > r < Weer ral od re “ bd , ee ie ae a hee a : ’ ies me * are, in ee = hi hy, sealed a } » ree Le ir > ii e / ’ my oe rien — q¥ : ry b - s a a Fe i ay al, y. o i " * IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS John G. Johnson collection, Philadelphia Exhibited at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1910-1911; at fifteenth international exhibition, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1911. This is a replica of the picture owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The scene represents a broad stretch of gravel walk, backed by the wall and balustrade of a terrace, on the right of which a flight of steps descends to where a portion of the basin of a fountain appears. On its waters is the reflection of a yellow harvest moon that hangs above some distant trees in the pale lavender sky. Prominent among the figures near the basin is a man in black who stands reading a newspaper. Over on the left, in the fore- ground, a lady and gentleman are promenading, her arm linked in his, the red and pale violet fan that she holds in her hand showing against his black suit. He carries his straw hat down beside his right leg. The lady’s hat, also of straw, is confined by a veil, tied under the chin. She wears a pinkish-mauve gown, the skirt of which is gathered up into a bunch of folds by her left hand. Beyond this couple, to the left, a man is sitting on a bench beneath the terrace, near a bed of crimson and pink flowers. Other flowers, including hollyhocks, enliven the back of the scene. Signed and dated at the right, “John S. Sargent, Paris, 1879.” ROBERT DECIVRIEUX AND HIS PET DOG Boston Art Museum Painted in Paris in 1879. A small-scale, full-length portrait of a chubby £22 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT little boy, who stands on a rug, in front of a curtain, in a studio, holding his pet dog under his right arm. He wears a black velvet suit, patent-leather pumps, a red necktie, and red socks, the color scheme of his costume being a handsome combination of black, red and white. ‘The head is finely drawn in a careful and deliberate manner, but the dog is brushed in with a freer and looser style of brushwork. FUMEE D’AMBRE-GRIS Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1880. This picture was the fruit of an excursion to the North African coast at the time of the painter’s first visit to Spain. It represents a young Oriental woman in a pearl-colored dress, standing on a rug, under a Moorish arch, with her hands raised to her head, and her sleeves falling in straight folds and casting a shadow over her face. The charming, dusky, white-robed person who, in the Tangerine subject exhibited at the Salon of 1880 . . . stands on a rug, under a great white Moorish arch, and from out of the shadows of the large drapery, raised pentwise by her hands, which covers her head, looks down, with painted eyes and brows showing above a bandaged mouth, at the fumes of a beau- tiful censer or chafing-dish placed on the carpet. . . . In her muffled contemplation and her pearl-colored robes, under her plastered arcade, which shines in the Eastern light, she transports and torments us. The picture is exquisite, a radiant effect of white upon white, of similar but dis- criminated tones.—Henry James: “Picture and Text,” Harper & Brothers. Canvas: 5434 x 2634 inches. SPANISH BEGGAR GIRL Paul Schulze collection Full-length figure of a young girl in white, standing in front of a light gray stucco wall. The costume is quite unusual and distinctly picturesque. The head and shoulders are hooded by a full white scarf. Over the white skirt is draped a long black sash which, encircling the waist, falls down over the front of the skirt, and is knotted together below the waist, the ends coming almost to the ground. Her left hand is extended, open, in front of her hip, in the gesture of solicitation of alms. The blond head, which is tilted a little to one side, wears an expression of mute, pathetic appeal. MRS. CHARLES GIFFORD DYER Art Institute of Chicago Exhibited at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. | Three-quarters length; small scale. The sitter is a slender woman in black, 124 GEORGE HENSCHEL, ESQ. Collection of Mr. Henschel, London Reproduced from the photogravure by courtesy of William Heinemann, Ltd., London OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES relieved against a rich reddish-brown background. Her hands lie clasped loosely in her lap; her long pale face wears a serious if not melancholy expression which is interestingly and closely characterized. A rose at left of foreground provides the only accent of warm color. This work is noticeable for its distinguished tone. Mrs. Dyer was the wife of a well- known American landscape painter, a native of Chicago, who lived in Europe some forty years. The Dyers were friends of Sargent and other members of the American colony in Italy. An inscription in the painter’s own handwriting runs as follows: “To my friend Mrs. Dyer. John S. Sargent, Venice, 1880.” Canvas: 24% x17 inches. Given to the Art Institute by the Friends of American Art, 1916. Formerly in the collection of Mr. Martin A, Ryerson. Reproduced in the Bulletin of the Art Institute, February, 1916, polal. MME. E. PAILLERON Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1880. The lady is represented standing in a park. The landscape setting is of a beautiful tone, light and fresh. The gown of a superb black material. The head, and especially the hair, are of a less satisfying quality. Wife of the French poet and dramatist, Edouard Jules Henri Pailleron, and the daughter of M. Buloz, manager of the Revue des Deux Mondes. SPANISH COURTYARD Louts B. McCagg collection Exhibited at National Academy of Design, New York, 1898; at Pennsyl- vania Academy, 1899; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899; at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915. A handsome composition in grays, with fine accents of black and white. The paved courtyard, with plaster walls, an arcade at the left, a big sculp- tured wood cross at the right, and at the back the timbered supports of a balcony, forms the setting for some eight or nine figures of women and children, who are scattered about in a casual way that seems wholly fortui- tous but nevertheless lends itself to a design of much pictorial excellence. The sitting figure of a young mother holding a child in her arms and looking down into its face, in the foreground, is highly interesting, the attitude and movement being depicted with notable felicity. Just beyond this group are two standing figures of women, rather sketchy, but amaz- 125 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT ingly lifelike. At the left, far back, near an open door, a group of women sewing and gossipping; and at the right a dark-haired young woman, whose head, shoulders and arms alone are visible above a railing protecting a stairway well, is evidently starting to go down the unseen flight of steps. LES CHENES This landscape represents a scene in the grounds of the Chateau des Chénes, the home of M. and Mme. Pierre Gautreau, at Paramé, Ille et Vilaine, Brittany. It shows a little brook meandering through the foreground, and beyond it a grove of slim young trees on a slope, with a glimpse of the sky. Canvas: 2114 x 255% inches. Signed at lower left, and dated 1880 at lower right. Formerly in the collection of Miss Grace Ellison, of Paris. JAMES LAWRENCE, ESQ. Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits, Copley Hall, Boston, 1896. MRS. JAMES LAWRENCE Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits, Copley Hall, Boston, 1896. MR. BURCKHARDT Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1881; at loan exhibition of portraits, National Academy of Design, New York, 1898; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. The father of the “Lady with a Rose,” Miss Burckhardt. Painted in 1880. THE ALHAMBRA Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Sketch. THE COURT OF "THE LIONS Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899.. Sketch, made in Granada, in 1880. MME. PAILLERON’S CHILDREN Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1881 under the title of ‘‘Portraits de M. E. P. et de Mlle. L. P.”’; at the exhibition of portraits and playthings of children 126 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES at Chateau Bagatelle, Paris, 1910, under the title of “Les Enfants Pailleron.” Note the picture of a brother and sister by Sargent, who has the dexterity, brilliancy, and somewhat ostentatious facility of his master, Carolus Duran, and with analogous properties of color. . . . The portrait of the children of M. P. gives me the impression of a man who, in spite of obvious gifts, is running the risk of entering upon a path at the end of which he will meet M. Dubufe.—J. Buisson in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. The children of Edouard Pailleron, celebrated poet and dramatist, best known as the author of ‘‘Le Monde ot |’on s’amuse” and “Le Monde ot lon s’ennuie.” S Cia oe MME, R.s, (MW Remon ) Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1881. This canvas depicts a young lady in white, at the piano, with pleasing accessories of flowers and Delft ware. The picture was warmly com- mended by the critic of Le Temps, who spoke of its creamy-gray tones, the freshness of the flowers, and the lively blue notes of the Delft porcelain. “Les audaces de M. Sargent nous plaisent beaucoup,’ wrote this critic, “et nous espérons qwelles seront bientét comprises.” Second-class medal, Salon, 1881. MISS BURCKHARDT (“LADY WITH A ROSE”) Collection of Mrs. Harold F. Hadden Exhibited at Paris Salon in 1881 under the erroneous title of “Mlle. L. P.”’; at Royal Academy, London, 1882, under the title of “‘A Portrait’; at Boston Art Museum, 1883, as “Portrait of a Lady”; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924, as ““The Lady with the Rose—My Sister.” Full-length. The young lady, dressed in black satin, stands with her right hand bent back resting on her waist, while the other hand, with the arm extended, offers to view a single rose. The dress, stretched at the hips over a sort of hoop, and ornamented in front, where it opens on a velvet petticoat, with large satin bows, has an old-fashioned air. The hair is arranged in two or three large curls fastened at one side over the temple with a comb. In the background is a vague faded silk curtain. More than the majority of Sargent’s portraits, this painting is permeated by a spiritual quality, and its sheer loveliness wins it an affectionate place in the hearts as well as the esteem of the observers.—Leila Mechlin. 127, CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT The childish contour of the face, the tender forehead bulging a little under soft waves of hair, the deep corners of the mouth, and the serious yet alert gaze are not only exquisite in themselves, they are exquisitely seen. Even the flip of the bent hand resting on the hip, a convention of uncon- ventionality, has its personal expressiveness. Probably the artist never has painted a more purely personal portrait or one that gives more successfully the illusion of mental, physical and spiritual life-——New York Times. Painted when he was but four-and-twenty years of age, the picture by which Mr. Sargent was represented at the Salon of 1881 is a performance which may well have made any critic of imagination rather anxious about his future. . . . It offers the slightly uncanny spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn. It is not simply precocity in the guise of maturity . . . it is the freshness of youth combined with the artistic experience, really felt and assimilated, of gen- erations. My admiration for this deeply distinguished work is such that I am perhaps in danger of overstating its merits; but it is worth taking into account that to-day, after several years’ acquaintance with them, these merits seem to me more and more to justify enthusiasm. The picture has this sign of productions of the first order, that its style would clearly save it if everything else should change—our measure of its value of resem- blance, its expression of character, the fashion of dress, the particular associations it evokes. . . . The artist has constructed a picture which it is impossible to forget, of which the most striking characteristic is its simplicity, and yet which overflows with perfection. Painted with extraordi- nary breadth and freedom, so that surface and texture are interpreted by the lightest hand, it glows with life, character and distinction, and strikes us as the most complete — with one exception, perhaps—of the author’s productions. — Henry James: “Picture and Text,’ Harper & Brothers. EL JALEO Fenway Court, Boston Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1882; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888- 1889; at Boston Art Museum, 1898, 1899, 1900, and 1912. Formerly in the collection of Hon. T. Jefferson Coolidge. This composition depicts a woman in the middle of a dimly lighted room, in a voluminous white silk dress and black mantilla, with her body thrown back in a slanting attitude, representing a figure of the Spanish dance. She 128 Courtesy Grand Central Art Galleries, New York MRS. DAVIS AND HER SON [ Mother and Child] Collection of Mr. Livingston Davis, Boston OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES is dancing to the accompaniment of her own castanets and that of a row of joyous white-garbed women and black-hatted musicians who sit in straw chairs against the grimy whitewashed wall in the background, and thrum upon guitar and tambourine, or lift their castanets into the air. Reveals the most remarkable qualities of observation and invention. Mr. Sargent also adds to these merits the great merit of not subordinating the impression received to the use of borrowed methods. Antonin Proust in Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Things which we should call admirably and ingeniously arranged were it not for the feeling that they happened so, that the artist seized upon a for- tuitous natural composition and recorded it either from memory or directly from the thing —Kenyon Cox. There is, as it were, the knack of Spain in his “El Jaleo,” something neither Italian nor Oriental, but proper to the spirit of the populace of this one peninsula, a somewhat deep-toned gaiety, a laugh in grave notes, and a kind of defiance, at least in the women.—Alice Meynell. It is a piece of naturalistic painting; every ingredient of visible passion, grace, and Spanish glamour which belongs to the famous dance . . . is reflected as in a mirror; but there is no tincture of the photograph there. A beautiful work of art, beautiful in its rich darks, its luminous yet restrained yellows, its grasping of some eight or ten figures in a design which seems simplicity itself—until you take the trouble to analyze the balance of its movement and the subtle codrdination of its values.—Royal Cortissoz. Reproduced in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, June, 1882. SPANISH DANCE A square canvas, evidently one of the studies made in Spain, in 1880, at the same time that “E] Jaleo” was painted. This is a vivid and spirited im- pression of a picturesque nocturnal scene, with several couples in the fore- ground going through the extravagant posturing of the national dance. In the background is a crowd of spectators and a few musicians with guitars and tambourines. MRS. VALLE AUSTEN Exhibited at Paris Salon, 1882; at National Academy of Design, New York, 1882; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916-1917; at City Art Museum, St. Louis, 1917. 129 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Three-quarters length; standing; full front; with slender hands loosely clasped together. The figure, in white satin, is relieved against a gray wall. A flowing black scarf falls from the throat over a bouquet of red roses. The face is very serious in its expression. The drawing of the head and hands is notably strong. Signed and dated Paris, 1882. This singularly charming painting . . . shows Mr. Sargent’s virtuosity in all its intensity, but subordinated to the theme. American Magazine of Art. It is a sympathetic portrait, in which Mr. Sargent has presented to us a subtle and rare beauty, poise, reserve. The satin is reminiscent of Terborch. The hands are perhaps the most remarkable part of the painting, sensitive, delicate, quietly folded together. Bulletin of the City Art Museum, St. Louis. THE BOIT CHILDREN Boston Art Museum Painted in 1882. Given to the Boston Art Museum in 1919 by the daugh- ters of Edward Darley Boit in memory of their father. Canvas: 8714 x 87% inches. Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1883 under the title of ‘Portraits d’Enfants”’; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889; at Paris Exposition, 1900; and at Boston Art Muesum many times prior to 1919. This large square picture is one of Sargent’s most important and most beautiful works of the early period. In the foreground, the youngest of the four little girls is sitting on a gray-blue rug, on the floor of the studio, holding her doll in her lap. At the left, the next youngest of the sisters stands, facing full front, with her hands behind her back, frankly posing for her likeness, but without undue self-consciousness. The two eldest children stand farther back in the room, one of them leaning against a huge blue-and-white Chinese vase considerably taller than herself. These two figures, half in shadow, are projected against the most deeply shadowed portion of the interior. The rendering of the white frocks and aprons is a triumph of crisp workmanship, and the same is true of the rugs, the vase, the red screen, etc. The arrangement of the group is unconventional, but exceedingly felicitous. It was a fortunate circumstance that the work was done for a fellow artist and an intimate friend, since in‘all probability it would have been difficult if not impossible to persuade the usual client to 130 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES permit so much freedom in the design. Here we have not merely a portrait group but a picture; the two things are combined with remarkable success. Light and shade, composition, color, drawing, textures, all are conceived from the point of view of a highly original pictorial effect, and, while the portrait element is not by any means negligible, it is, as it were, subordi- nated to the beautiful pictorial impression. Never has Sargent been more spontaneous than in this delightful canvas, which has in a peculiar degree all the piquancy of his personal touch and style. The naturalness of the composition, the loveliness of the complete effect, the light, free security of the execution, the sense it gives us as of assimi- lated secrets and of instinct and knowledge playing together —all this makes the picture as astonishing a work on the part of a young man of twenty-six as the portrait of 1881 was astonishing on the part of a young man of twenty-four.— Henry James: “Picture and Text,” Harper & Brothers. One of the most consummately skilful of Mr. Sargent’s performances, although in it the imitation of his favorite model, Velasquez, is patent and avowed.—Claude Phillips. The exact values of the tones, the relations of the lights to the darks, the atmospheric effect over all, are precisely and irreproachably right. John C. Van Dyke. MRS. ADRIAN ISELIN Exhibited at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Nearly full-length; standing; the right hand rests lightly on the corner of an inlaid table with ormolu mounts. Black satin dress with passementerie trimmings. A portrait which claims and holds attention as few portraits of to-day do, a picture profoundly personal, full of character, vital in the extreme, a beautiful work.—Leila Mechlin. She stands proudly erect; only the clutch of telltale fingers on the ormolu mount of a near-by table betrays that this erectness demands an effort of will. Her formal black satin gown with its glitter of passementerie and long-looped watch-chain have the unostentatious elegance of a bygone day, while the strength and reserve of the face under its smooth parting of gray hair bespeak self-discipline that, too, is a little out of fashion. Margaret Breuning in New York Evening Post. 131 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT VENETIAN INTERIOR Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh Exhibited at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. One of the painter’s most fascinating interiors. In a large bare room are seven figures. The color scheme is restricted to a gamut of fine blacks, whites, grays and browns. [wo girls are standing near the foreground, and one is seated at the left. At the farther end of the room is an open door, and through this we see the figure of another girl, on a balcony or porch, in full light. Just inside the door, two women are sitting, at the left, with a child between them. THE SULPHUR MATCH (CIGARETTE) Collection of Mr. Louis Curtis Exhibited at loan exhibition, Copley Gallery, Boston, 1917; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. ‘Two small figures, that of a swarthy man lighting his cigarette, and that of a woman sitting in a chair which is tipped back against the wall. She turns her head a little towards her companion, with an inscrutable expres- sion, possibly half coquettish; while he momentarily ignores her, concen- trating all his attention upon the important operation of lighting his fag. Signed and dated Venice, 1882. VENISE PAR TEMPS GRIS Collection of Sir Philip Sassoon This composition comes as close to being a panoramic view as anything by Sargent. It is a view from the Riva degli Schiavoni, looking westward, towards the Ducal Palace, the Campanile, and Santa Maria della Salute. In the right foreground is the quai, dotted here and there with small figures of pedestrians. At the left, the Lagoon, with many fishing boats moored alongside the mole. ‘The work is brushed in, in a sketchy way, but with a fine gray tonality, and much atmospheric verisimilitude. In general effect it is not unlike a Whistler. It would be interesting to compare it with a Can- aletto or a Guardi, a Ziem or a Bunce, and, different as it is from each and all of these painters’ conceptions of Venice, it would hold its own in any company. SELF-PORTRAIT Kepplestone collection THORNTON K. LOTHROP, ESQ. Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889; at Sargent loan exhi- bition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1916. Painted in 1882. 132 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES PORTRAIT OF A CHILD Mrs. Eleanor Jay Chapman collection Exhibited at fourth annual exhibition of contemporary American art, Boston Art Museum, 1883. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL Mrs. Charles J. White collection Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1916. Painted 1883-1884. A contemporary notice called attention to the very simple and delicate piece of modeling in the head. DOCTOR POZZI This portrait, painted about 1883, in Paris, does not appear to have been exhibited at the Salon. Doctor Pozzi was a distinguished surgeon. Sargent painted him wearing a brilliant red dressing gown. According to Henry James, the sitter was a gallant pictorial type and the picture was splendid. The bearing of the eminent physician was “as noble as that of a figure by Van Dyck.” WILLIAM THORNE, ESQ. Exhibited at eleventh international exhibition, Carnegie Institute, Pitts- burgh, 1907; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1907. Sketch portrait. Mr. Thorne is an American portrait painter and a National Academician, with a studio in New York. MADAME GAUTREAU Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1884; at Carfax Gallery, London, 1909; at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915. Full-length portrait of a famous Parisian beauty—a contestable beauty, according to contemporary records; the lady stands upright beside a table on which her right arm rests, with her body almost fronting the spectator and her face in complete profile. She wears an entirely sleeveless dress of black satin, against which her admirable left arm detaches itself; the line of her harmonious profile has a sharpness which Mr. Sargent does not always seek, and the crescent of Diana, an ornament in diamonds, rests on her singular head. It is said that the picture failed to please her, and her numerous friends spent much indignation upon the artist. A certain section 133 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT of fashionable Paris took up the case, and it led to much contention in salon and atelier. Purely French, with a French character lying out of the view of the cari- caturist, is the fine clear portrait of Madame Gautreau, the firm and solid profile, with decision, not weakness, in its receding forehead and small chin.—Alice Meynell. There is the masterful accent of the man born to paint portraits, born to draw from each of his sitters the one unforgettable and vital impression which is waiting for the artist—Royal Cortissoz. Mr. L. de Fourcaud devoted a generous amount of space to his discussion of this important work in an article on the Salon in the Gazette des Beaux- Arts, June, 1884. He avowed that he was a convinced admirer of the picture, in which he discerned all sorts of curious intentions and strange refinements. He spoke of the peculiarities of the type of women known as “professional beauties,” who, he said, became idols rather than women. Sargent had in this work depicted the idol, and it should be regarded in that light. The purity of the lines of his model must havestruck him at once, and he determined to make of the portrait something like a large drawing in cameo style. . . . “Of course, I do not affirm that the painter indulged himself in profound speculations regarding the psychology of his model; it may very well be that he was actuated solely by plastic preoccupations; but I do affirm that the design was his chief objective in this portrait .. . and that as a result of his perseverance in observing and fixing the manner of being of the idol we have a work not only of refinement but also of great carrying power.” Painted at M. and Mme. Pierre Gautreau’s country house, Les Chénes, at Paramé, Ille et Vilaine, near St. Malo, on the coast of Brittany. Canvas: 82144x 43% inches. Reproduced in “The Work of John S. Sargent, R.A.,” in Scribner’s Magazine for November, 1903, and in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for May, 1915. MRS. KATE A. MOORE Luxembourg Museum, Paris Exhibited at one hundred and sixteenth exhibition Pennsylvania Academy, 1921; at Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1918. Full-length; seated, in a shadowy interior, with many still-life accessories in sight—furniture, china, flowers, bric-a-brac, etc., all brushed in with the painter’s customary virtuosity. The pose of the sitter is not wholly repose- ful; and her sidelong glance does not explain itself. 134 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES Striking characterization; beautiful contours; exquisite rendering of ma- terials; qualities to which no reproduction could do justice. American Magazine of Art MRS. HENRY WHITE Née Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherford; wife of the former American Ambassador to Italy and to France. Painted in 1884. She is shown at full length, standing, in white satin gown with train; a fan held in the right hand; in the background is a gray curtain and a chaise longue with ormolu mounts and a red cushion. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1884; at Paris Universal Exposi- tion, 1900; at sixth exhibition of contemporary American paintings, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916-1917; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. The pose has all the é/an and freshness of youth, and the carriage of the graceful head is charming. The drawing and painting are, it need hardly be said, clever in the extreme.—The Art Journal. ‘The marvelous painting of Mrs. Henry White . . . thrills you across the long room. It is one of the splendid portraits of all time, this presentment of an aristocratic woman, dignified, aloof, beautiful, who draws you unwaveringly to her without the flick of an eyelash or the least unbending of the calm formality of her pose. Margaret Breuning in New York Evening Post. THE DEADLY PARALLEL One of the finest and most discerning portraits that Mr. Sargent has painted, full not only of technical merit and artistic worth, but personality and spiritual significance. “he composi- tion is charmingly rendered, the tex- ture inimitable, the pose and expres- sion peculiarly happy, and the inter- pretation of character is so subtle yet so sympathetic that none can fail to feel its significance. American Magazine of Art. Mr. J. S. Sargent has been the victim of a reputation too easily acquired. He does his powers injustice by neg- lecting taste in every element of his pictures except that tonality in which he excels. His Mrs. H. White, a life- size, whole-length figure in a fawn- colored dress, is hard; the painting is almost metallic; the carnations are raw; there is no taste in the expres- sion, air or modeling; but the work is able enough to deserve recasting. The Athenaeum. 135 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT MRS. HENRY WHITE Sketch. Exhibited at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916-1917; at Grand Cen- tral Galleries, New York, 1924. Head and shoulders only. This is the preliminary study of the sitter whose full-length in white was painted at the same period. It has the spontaneity of an improvisation in its broad bravura, but it is as substantial an evocation as the more deeply pondered canvas. ‘The smaller canvas registers perhaps the high-water mark of Mr. Sargent’s prowess as a brushman pure and simple. We have never seen anything of his to beat it in flowing force, in confident, easy mastery.—Royal Cortissoz. POINTY Mrs. H. F. Hadden collection Exhibited at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. A portrait sketch of a dog, painted in Paris, 1884. MRS. T. W. LEGH Exhibited at Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1884. Vivacious and charming; the flesh tones are clear and pure. The Art Journal “MADAME ERRAZURIS Half-length; seated; full front; this remarkably spirited realization of a smiling and comely young woman embodies the joy of living with the most engaging felicity and naturalness. She looks as if she were overflowing with good nature and high spirits, and not only that, but she has the unmis- takable aspect of an alert intelligence. The face certainly illustrates the implication of the phrase ‘“‘a speaking likeness,” since its suggestion of interesting conversational powers is unmistakable. Madame Errazuris was an Austrian lady, and the portrait was painted in Paris, in 1884. THE MISSES VICKERS Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1885; at Royal Academy, 1886; at Paris Universal Exposition of 1900; at exhibition of Twenty Years of British Art, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1910. These three young ladies, sisters, sitting in an irregular row, in a dining room much foreshortened, aroused in London a chorus of murmurs, and, 136 CARMENCITA Luxembourg Museum, Paris Reproduced from the photogravure by courtesy of William Heinemann, Ltd., London OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES according to Henry James, had the further privilege of drawing forth some prodigies of purblind criticism. Of the three young girls, two are seated on a sofa at the left. One of these is dressed in black; the other in white. The girl in black, with downcast eyes, is looking over the pages of a magazine which lies in her lap, as she turns the leaves; the girl in white, who apparently has been looking at the same magazine, for one of her hands still holds a corner of the open page, is now directing her gaze elsewhere. Her left arm is thrown across the back of the settee, encircling her sister. The third figure, a little farther back, seems to be the eldest of the trio. She is sitting in a low chair, at the right, the back of the chair towards the ob- server; she has thrown her left arm over the chair-back, and she turns side- ways in such a position as to bring her left side towards the artist, while her head is still more to the left, so that the face is almost full front. In the vaguely indicated background are a table with teacups, a chair, a screen, and a window at the right. It is in his usual bold, suggestive manner; not quite so dashing nor so pleasantly strong in color as his “Lady Playfair,” but with something more intimately expressive in the faces, and a more sincere and unaffected study of the type—R. A. M. Stevenson. “The Misses Vickers” . . . justifies itself through the sheer charm of the effect which the painter has secured from his lawless arrangement of forms. Royal Cortissoz. Mr. Sargent, always uneven, but always interesting, has grouped in a curiously cut-up frame three young girls, three foreigners; the painting of _ this group is so savory, seductive, and persuasive, that it makes us pardon him more than one juggler’s trick (tour de passe-passe). André Michel in Gazette des Beaux-Arts Take the portrait of ““The Misses Vickers,” or, rather, take the portrait of the particular Miss Vickers who sits detached from the interlaced couple in the center of the picture, and we shall see a young lady foreshortened in a manner in which probably no young lady (sitting for her portrait) was ever foreshortened before. But that she is actually in perspective as she is drawn, and, moreover, absolutely vital to the balance of the picture in the place and at the angle in which you find her, any expert can see at a glance. Marion Hepworth Dixon. It is the me plus ultra of French painting, or, rather, of the French method as learned by a clever foreigner, in which everything is sacrificed to tech- 137 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT nical considerations. . . . And yet, when it is all done, what good is it? . . . For—and this is the whole point of our criticism—no human being except a painter can take any pleasure in such work as this. People may ad- mire and wonder at its skill and audacity, and even be gratified by them, much in the same way as we are gratified when the Japanese juggler spins fifteen plates at the same time; but genuine, lasting pleasure can no man take in what is essentially shallow, pretentious, and untrue. Harry Quilter in The Spectator, May 1, 1886. MRS. VICKERS Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1885; at Royal Academy, 1886. Brushed in with a summary and confident mastery of style. The work is somewhat slatey in tone. Sargent fully maintains his high reputation. His portrait of the three sisters all on one canvas is very powerful. So also is his portrait of Mme. V., though in a less degree, perhaps.—J/lustrated London News. Mr. Sargent, like Mr. Whistler, is very skilful in his treatment of those parts of the picture which he does not wish to make important, which are to play only a decorative part, to guide the eye elsewhere, and to support or increase the effect of the rest —R. A. M. Stevenson. HOME FIELDS Detroit Institute of Arts A landscape motive of ordinary character in itself, but poetized by the late afternoon effect of light. The observer is looking away from the sun, towards an old barn at the right background, and along the line of a dilapidated fence in sharp perspective. These objects catch the last gleams of the setting sun. The beams that fall across the meadow at the left are contrasted with the shadows of the feathery young trees. Over this scene of approaching dusk the cool sky heralds the coming of an autumn night. This landscape study was painted at Broadway, Worcestershire, in 1885, and was given by the artist to his friend Frank Bramley, painter of the pathetic picture called ““A Hopeless Dawn,” in the Tate Gallery, London. ‘The canvas is inscribed in the lower left-hand corner, “Io my friend Bramley,” and signed. MRS. BARNARD Exhibited at Anglo-American exhibition, Shepherd’s Bush, London, 1914. This portrait of the wife of Fred Barnard, the well-known illustrator, was 138 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES painted at Broadway, Worcestershire, in 1885, and is a superb early example. Mrs. Barnard was the mother of the two pretty little girls who posed for the figures in the “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.” The nobility that he knew so well to gain by subtle management of space and mass.—FElisabeth Luther Cary. MRS. FRANCIS D. MILLET Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. The wife of the American figure painter. She is depicted in a lilac costume. A delightful picture. It was painted at Broadway, Worcestershire, where the Millets were living at the time. LADY -PLAY FAIR Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1885; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1887; at Paris Salon of 1888; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. A striking example of the painter’s virtuosity. The color scheme is excep- tionally brilliant. Lady Playfair wears black lace over an orange-colored satin bodice and skirt. The comments of the London critics in 1885 were for the most part specimens of the “prodigies of purblind criticism” men- tioned by Henry James. The Athenaeum pronounced the air of the figure “almost vulgar in its demonstrativeness,” and added the following paradox: “Beauty, choiceness, and delicacy of form, modelling, local coloring, light and shade, and even the character of the subject, have one and all been sacrificed to the attainment of a Velasquez-like but very crude manner of coloring and painting.” The critic of the I/lustrated London News wrote: “Mr. John Sargent’s portrait of Lady Playfair, though clever, is conceived in the very worst spirit of contemporary French art. Its technical ability may be generally admitted, although the modelling of the arms is the reverse of graceful, but the failure of the attempt to portray a grande dame is painfully conspicuous.” The Saturday Review found the work “brilliant and dashing,” with its “truly Parisian qualities of chic and winning attractiveness.” The Art Journal critic declared it was “decidedly tapageur, and neither graceful nor dignified.” 139 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT CARNATION, LILY, LILY, ROSE Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1887; at fifty-sixth exhibition Royal Glas- gow Institute of the Fine Arts, 1917. Chantrey Purchase, 1887. In a garden filled with red and white blossoms, two pretty little English girls in white frocks are busily engaged at twilight in preparing Chinese lanterns for a féte. The time is a summer evening; and the effect is that of a conflict of lights between the fading daylight and the illuminated lanterns. Signed. Canvas: 5 feet 71% inches by 4 feet 11 inches. The picture is Japanese in its sense of decoration, as if decoration and idyllic moments always went together.—T. Martin Wood. The children are exquisitely painted, and the flowers and whole lower half of the picture marvellously beautiful, but we could spare much detail from the top, that we might enjoy the rest unembarrassed by a profusion of white spots.—Saturday Review. This conflict of lights and colors is rather embarrassing to the eye at first, and harms the first general impression, but little by little the artist’s idea and conception, at once bold and feeling, reveal themselves and charm us. It is especially in the two delightful types of young girls that he manifests a tenderness which he has not often shown us. Sir Claude Phillips in Gazette des Beaux-Arts. The refined originality of this embroidery of light and shadow, the lights so brilliant, the shadows penetrated with mystery, the affectionate tender- ness with which the children and flowers are represented, the lovely imag- inativeness of the whole conception, bespoke qualities which have appeared only partially in the portraits, and are altogether of a rarer significance than their vivid actuality—Charles H. Caffin. . . . The introduction and painting of the children’s figures, the disposi- tion of the masses of flowers and leaves with which they are surrounded; the delicately bold coloring of the roses, carnations and lilies—in all of these respects is this picture an exquisite work of art. And even now we have left some chief merits untold, and must leave them undescribed. For how is it possible to describe in words that subtle rendering of brilliance and shadow, that united mystery and revelation which render this composition so admirable? —Harry Quilter. 140 BEATRICE Copyright, 1925, by Robert Walton Goelet MISS BEATRICE GOELET Collection of Mr. Robert Walton Goelet, New York OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES Portraits of childhood and an exquisite study of twilight and lantern-light, with the fine violet tints that artificial light lends to evening air, and with white as lovely in its coolness as the white of Titian in its gold, are united in the garden picture, “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.” It is strange that any one affects to make light of truth and to look elsewhere for decoration, when nature and truth can look so beautiful.—Alice Meynell. SKETCH FOR CARNATION, LILY, LILY, ROSE Painted in 1885. Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899. BY THE RIVER Mrs. J. Montgomery Sears collection A young lady in a white skirt, pink waist, and straw hat with blue ribbon, is sitting on the bank of a river, under the trees, reading. Her bluish-green parasol stands furled by her side. The little stream at the left is seen in perspective flowing beneath the trees; and at a distance there are swans paddling about on its smooth surface. Beyond a verdant meadow at the right are the high plastered walls of a farmyard in the background. Painted at Broadway, Worcestershire, 1885. Pre CIGARETTE Brilliant study of a woman at a table on which large candelabra are won- derfully indicated. It was originally an upright, but the artist cut it down by taking a piece off the bottom of the canvas. Painted at Broadway, Worcestershire, in 1885. MRS. ARTHUR LAWRENCE ROTCH Mrs. Henry Parkman, Jr., collection Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903 and 1916. The portrait of Mrs. Rotch is conceived quite as Copley might have con- ceived it—but he could never, in his palmiest days, have executed it with the superb breadth, ease and virtuosity which it displays in every feature and detail. Boston Transcript. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney collection Exhibited at New English Art Club, 1887; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. I4I CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT An interior with two figures. The novelist, at the left, is walking up and down the room, and appears to be soliloquizing, or, perhaps, dictating. At the right, in shadow, seated, the figure of Mrs. Stevenson. An open door and stairway at background. The walls of the room are red. Painted at Bournemouth, in 1885. Interesting both for subject and treatment is the picture of Robert Louis Stevenson walking to and fro in a red-walled room, dictating a story to his wife. His long, lank form, the intense life that pulses in the feeble frame, and the characteristic gesture as he lifts one hand to his face while groping for the right word—all are ably made to contribute to the realization of the beloved author’s personality—W. H. D. in Boston Transcript. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1887; at Society of American Artists, New York, 1893; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1899; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Portrait study. Painted at Bournemouth, in 1885. Full-length; seated in a wicker armchair, with legs crossed, and the slim body listlessly sunk down in the chair. The right hand holding a cigarette, and the left hand resting on leg. ‘The hands are very characteristic in shape and position. Fur rug on the floor. Cabinet in background. Then there was a portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson, with the long legs, long fingers, long face, long hair, perhaps exaggerated a little, and cer- tainly giving the sitter a queer, uncanny look—Magazine of Art. MRS. MASON Exhibited at Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1885. Full-length. The costume is of black material, with much transparent muslin. Very clever, but hard and stiff.—I/lustrated London News. Mr. Sargent’s portrait of Mrs. Mason is notable for distinction and style. Saturday Review. MRS. WILTON PHIPPS AND WINSTON = Henry Phipps collection Exhibited at London, 1886; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Mrs. Phipps is the grandmother of the infant she is holding in her lap. She 142 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES wears a blue-gray dress, and the child is in white, with a baby cap of bluish- white. The background is a conventionalized landscape. Mrs. Phipps’s gray hair is relieved against a dark mass of foliage. The treatment of the drapery is perhaps a little fussy, a rare defect in Sargent’s work. Somehow, Sargent does not seem to have comprehended in this work infancy, and here one feels a little overstraining of the style of the English eighteenth century.—Leila Mechlin. Very charming in aspect and distinguished in its color scheme of black and white.—William A. Coffin. Engraved on wood by Timothy Cole for the Century Magazine, 1912. MRS. WILTON PHIPPS Mrs. Butler Duncan collection Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. MRS. HARRISON Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1886. No doubt there is a certain chic about his portraits, and at a distance the general effect is not unpleasing, but his coloring and composition are both eccentric.—Art Journal. An exercise in white, red and gray; is,so far as this goes, excellent, although it is decidedly unpleasant as a household companion, and, for the owner’s sake, we hope unjust to the lady.— The Athenaeum. GEORGE R. FEARING Exhibited at the Copley Gallery, Boston, 1917. PORTRAIT OF A LADY Exhibited at New.English Art Club, 1886. Should be seen from a distance; the painting is of a most dashing sort, and the wonderful rendering of the dress and background cannot fail to evoke admiration.— Art Journal. SPREE E SCENE IN VENICE Collection of Mrs. Stanford White Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1893; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at the Copley Gallery, Boston, 1916; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. 143 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT A somber street scene with several figures. The vista of a narrow street. In the foreground a young woman, slender and of a fine bearing, is walking. She has just passed two men who are standing at the right, near the wall of one of the buildings. They are wearing cloaks, and are staring at the woman. As a painting pure and simple it is a marvel. The arrangement—that is hardly the word for it, for it seems an inevitable design, one of those things that could not have happened otherwise—is novel and pictorially all that it could or should be. The placing of the three main figures is notably felici- tous.—W. H. D. in Boston Transcript. There is a sketch by Sargent of a slatternly red-headed girl with a black shawl over her head coming over the stones of a shabby little street that zs Venice as none of the other representations are. The canals may be filled up, St. Mark’s may crumble as the Campanile has done; but as long as the race and the climate remain, so long will remain the clear, colorless morbidezza of the face, the limp clinging skirts with all the stiffness taken out by the moist sea air, and the gentle lassitude of the loafers leaning against the wall draped in their dark cloaks. ‘The curious thing is that while the picture is in grays and blacks, without a single bright touch, it is not only more true but infinitely more beautiful in color than the customary blaze of orange and red; and while there is not a trace of old carving or Gothic architecture, yet it somehow gives the grace and mystery of Venice as Ruskin’s painfully elaborated drawings do not.—Samuel Isham. VENETIAN GLASS WORKERS Martin A. Ryerson collection Painted in 1886. Canvas: 22 x 33% inches. An interior with five figures, mostly in the cool gray tones characteristic of this period, with sharp contrasts of light and dark. The light falling from a high window at the left background and that from an unseen window in front strikes on the figures of the workers who are shaping great sheets of glass, and who are so intent upon their tasks that they seem quite uncon- scious of being under observation. Especially well characterized is the figure of the woman at the right of the foreground, whose action is ex- ceedingly well suggested. VENETIAN BEAD STRINGERS Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1893; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899; at eighth annual exhibition of selected 144 Copyrighted, 1924, Grand Central Art Galleries, New York MRS. AUGUSTUS HEMENWAY Collection of Mrs. Hemenway, Boston OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES paintings by American artists, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1913; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Formerly in collection of Carroll Beckwith. The picture, painted in a subdued tone, depicts a large bare interior with three figures of women in the foreground near a window. Two of these women are seated, and the third is standing, looking down and holding a fan. The attitude of all three gives an impression of lassitude and depres- sion. In the background is an old stairway, a window, and a door; at the right a bench stands near the wall. Acquired in 1917, and illustrated in Academy Notes, October-December, 1917. VENETIAN WATER CARRIERS W orcester Art Museum Exhibited at National Academy of Design, New York, 1910. Two women are shown at a public well. One of them is drawing up the bucket, and the other, who has already filled her water pail, is starting for home. In the background is a plaster-walled building, and an open door. The action of the figures is noticeably well rendered, especially that of the woman at the left, who is carrying off a full pail of water. The color scheme is chiefly of grays, with effective contrasts of black and white. MRS. CHARLES P. CURTIS Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1916 and 1919. MRS. AND MISS BURCKHARDT Exhibited at Paris Salon of 1886. Portrait of mother and daughter. The former occupies an armchair in the foreground, while the young lady, somewhat farther back in the room, stands with her hands resting on the back of the chair. The mother, an elderly woman, but well preserved, bears in her face the marks of a life passed in ease and luxury. She has the indefinable air of a personage of assured social position. Her eyes are suggestive of a keen and original character, alert intelligence, and a kindly disposition. The daughter, who is the young person whose full-length portrait was first shown in the Salon of 1881, when she was five years younger, has now become a grown woman. She holds herself erect, serious, enigmatic, and aristocratic. This intelligence, the product of temperament and love of his art, rules supreme in the works of Sargent. . . . The superior nature of his 145 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT mind gives him the power of combining lightness of handling with depth of sentiment—a combination exceedingly rare among the painters of our time. A picture by Sargent is the result of justice and decision, of sobriety and research; its color is calm and forcible, always very harmonious, without weakness.—Paul de Labrosse in Revue Illustrée. Mr. Sargent’s prodigious dexterity astonishes less than it did; there are now too many prestidigitators at the Salon; we are getting a little tired of their exercises. Fortunately, Mr. Sargent does not rest satisfied to be merely a clever man; he is a seeker of attitudes and a composer quite out of the ordinary routine order. He is fond of rare elegances, with a slight touch of strangeness; thus he does not choose his models from among the fetite bourgeoisie. ‘The portrait of Mme. and Mlle. B., two beautiful ladies in a single frame, produces the usual effect upon the public; a sort of exotic aroma emanates from them which intoxicates the beholder. Some, how- ever, turn away, saying that it is unwholesome painting, and hasten to breathe a little pure air in front of the canvases of M. Bouguereau. Alfred de Lostalot in Gazette des Beaux-Arts. MRS. WILLIAM PLAYFAIR Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1887; at Paris Salon of 1888. Life-size; three-quarters length; three-quarters front view. Showing, against a lie de vin background, a lady of majestic proportions, dressed in satin of a yellowish white, and draped in a bottle-green velvet cloak trimmed with black fur. The brilliancy of this costume in no degree obscures the clear brightness and harmony of the flesh tones. One of his most delicate works. . . . Everything is indicated with a supreme lightness, charm and distinction. And it is the light, the sweet counsellor of all fine painting, that shows here its beneficent magic. André Michel. Mr. Sargent’s subtlety of modelling and personal manner of seeing things have never been better exemplified than in the flesh painting of the portrait referred to.—Saturday Review. The painter has been able to give to his sitter an intensity of physical life, even a charm—born of frankness and good humor—that makes it one of his truest and most wholly satisfactory works. The artist’s virtuosity is shown in the remarkable lighting of the head and figure, in the ingenious way with which the light-and-shade effect comes into play to vanquish 146 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES certain difficulties inherent in the subject, and, to a lesser degree, in the color, which is novel and piquant rather than truly transparent and luminous.—Sir Claude Phillips in Gazette des Beaux-Arts. MRS. H. G. MARQUAND Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1888; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Philadelphia; at Pittsburgh. Full-length, seated, holding a fan in the right hand. Costume of black with broad white lace collar and fichu. Painted at Newport, R. I., in 1887. There is not in modern portraiture a more satisfactory study in dignity and noble stateliness than his ‘““Mrs. Marquand.”—Royal Cortissoz. Is perhaps the most delicate and refined of all that he has produced; in it he evinces a respect for his sitter and a reserve in his execution which assuredly mark progress in his brilliant career.—Sir Claude Phillips. Perhaps the most unexceptionably charming thing that Mr. Sargent has painted. There is nothing in the color or the workmanship that the most captious could call careless, ostentatious, or eccentric, and few will fail to see that they have been inspired by a really sympathetic perception of the character of the sitter.—Saturday Review. This is a piece of fine quality, and, in its tone and color, of a very choice kind, admirable for its harmonious disposition of the masses, treatment of the textures, and light. The delicately true hands have been studied with uncommon zest and taste—The Athenaeum. MRS. EDWARD D. BRANDEGEE Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1916 and 1924. Three-quarters length; standing figure; in a white muslin dress, with light blue ribbon at the waist, and a string of blue beads around the neck. A shawl has fallen from the lady’s shoulders to the level of her waist, where it is held in place by both hands, Pearl earrings. The right elbow rests on a massive balustrade. Dark foliage back of the figure at the right, and a glimpse of the sea in the distance at the left. The picture is enlivened by some stray spots of direct sunlight falling on the balustrade at the left of the foreground. GORDON FAIRCHILD Fairchild collection Exhibited at Copley Gallery, Boston, 1917; at Boston Art Museum, 1925. Life-size sketch portrait of a boy, sitting tailor-fashion in a wicker arm- 147 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT chair, and resting his head against a cushion. The pose appears to have been taken spontaneously. ‘There is something very natural and agreeable about the tilt of the charming head, the downward glance of the eyes, and the slightly parted lips. GORDON FAIRCHILD Fairchild collection Small head. SALLY FAIRCHILD Fairchild collection Three-quarters length. SALLY FAIRCHILD Fairchild collection ‘Three-quarters length. Unfinished. MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD Fairchild collection Head. DENNIS MILLER BUNKER Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889. A Boston painter of distinct merit who died early. FREDERIC P. VINTON Sketch portrait of the leading portraitist of Boston, painted in Vinton’s studio, where Sargent painted several of his series of portraits in 1888. COUNTESS CLARY ALDRINGEN Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1888. MRS. EDWARD D. BOIT Collection of the Misses Boit Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1888; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-— 1889; at Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. Nearly full-fength. It shows her sitting on a sofa, the left arm resting on a velvet cushion, and the hands loosely clasped together. ‘The lips are parted in a half-smile, and the eyes are directed towards the left with an amused expression. Her costume is composed of a light figured silk skirt and a dark waist with V-shaped neck and elbow-length sleeves; she wears a hair ornament of feathers. 148 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES The wife of Edward D. Boit, the artist, who was one of Sargent’s most intimate friends in Paris in the eighties. She was the mother of the four little girls of the ““Boit Children” group, now in the Boston Art Museum. He gives free rein to his eccentric fancy, rendering with astonishing verve and unconventionality a joyous and exuberant personality. Sir Claude Phillips. Made an impression of power like a Velasquez.—Richard Muther. ” Painted in a broad large style. Abounding in “go, garized—T he A thenaeum. it is a Velasquez vul- MR. EDWARD D. BOIT MRS. CHARLES E. INCHES Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1888; at National Academy of Design, New York, 1888; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888— 1889; at World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at loan exhibi- tion of portraits of women, Boston, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Boston Art Museum, 1924. Painted in 1888. Half-length; full face. This brilliant painting of a beautiful young lady shows her in a red velvet dress, sleeveless, and décolleté, revealing shapely arms, shoulders and neck, on which the head is finely poised. The thick, dark dair is dressed high on the top of the head; and the dark eyes are turned slightly to one side under their heavy eyebrows. We had remembered always, from 1899, the portrait of Mrs. Charles Inches, the study of a figure in ruby red velvet, never seen in the interval, but recalled in unfading vividness for its sensitive modelling and drawing and for its pure color. We wondered if it would reappear and how it would look. It looks now as it looked then, a superb bit of craftsmanship. Not a scintilla of its brilliance has it lost. Its flashing beauty remains as potent. For this portrait, at all events, time has stood still—Royal Cortissoz. CASPER GOODRICH Mrs. Goodrich’s collection Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889; at New York, 1889- 1890, at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1904. 149 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Painted in 1888. This likeness of a little boy in a sailor’s suit is a charming interpretation of boyish character. Not only in the Miss Beatrice Goelet, but in the Hon. Laura Lister, the Homer Saint-Gaudens, the Master Goodrich, and the Boit Children, he has treated adolescence with the most searching understanding. Royal Cortissoz. MRS. JOHN L. GARDNER Fenway Court, Boston Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889; at Fenway Court, Boston, 1925. Full-length; front view. She wears a black gown which is cut low at the neck, with short sleeves. Pearl ornaments at neck and waist. The hands are loosely clasped together. The pattern of the tapestry in the background forms an irregular circle just back of the lady’s head, suggesting the idea of a nimbus. It remains in the imagination as a question that contains its own answer.— Elizabeth Ward Perkins. GENERAL LUCIUS FAIRCHILD Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889. American soldier and diplomatist. As colonel of the Second Wisconsin Regiment he lost his left arm at Gettysburg. Governor of Wisconsin, 1866-1872; United States consul at Liverpool, 1872-1878; Consul- General at Paris, 1878-1880; Minister to Spain, 1880-1882; Com- mander-in-chief, Grand Army of the Republic, 1886. MRS. LUCIUS FAIRCHILD Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889. CLAUDE MONET National Academy of Design Exhibited at the New Gallery, London, 1888; at Sargent loan exhibition, : Boston, 1899. A sketch of the French impressionist master painting out of doors. Painted at Giverny, in 1888. Expresses character with great breadth and freedom.—Saturday Review. CECIL, SON OF ROBERT HARRISON, ESQ. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1888. 150 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES MRS. DAVE H. MORRIS AS A GIRL Mrs. Morris’s collection Painted in 1888. Exhibited at World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899, under title of “Portrait of a Child”; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Formerly in the collection of Mrs. E. F. Shepard. A brunette type. She has jet-black hair and dark eyes, and, with her fine complexion, is the very picture of health. She wears a dark blue-black jacket over a white waist. At the left of the foreground is a blue figured cushion. MRS. ELLIOTT F. SHEPARD Painted in 1888. SKETCH OF A CHILD Doctor Gorham Bacon’s collection Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889; at National Academy of Design, New York, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. SONS OF MRS. MALCOLM FORBES Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1888-1889. MISS DAISY LEITER Full-length; outdoor setting. Miss Leiter is shown wearing a white silk dress, with the draperies blown about by a brisk breeze. In the taste of the British eighteenth-century school. Miss Leiter became the Countess of Suffolk. A word must be said of the graceful American girl, Miss Leiter, who figures in surroundings that it would have pleased Sir Joshua to paint her, and . . . must have proved a subject no less grateful to the aesthetic taste of Mr. Sargent—Frank Fowler. MISS ELLEN TERRY AS LADY MACBETH Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at the New Gallery, London, 1889; at Royal Academy, 1890; at New Salon, Paris, 1890; at World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at sixty-third exhibition Pennsylvania Academy; at Royal Hiber- nian Academy, Dublin, 1898. 151 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Full-length. The pose is that taken by the actress at the moment when she is about to place the royal crown of Duncan upon her head. The gold reflects a reddish glow on the palms of her hands. She holds the crown in both hands, momentarily suspended over her head, and the inscrutable expression of her eyes would appear to convey the sudden perception of some startling vision. She is wearing the robe of metallic blue with long green sleeves decorated all over with iridescent beetle wings, designed for Sir Henry Irving’s revival of the tragedy at the Lyceum Theatre. The picture, which was formerly in the possession of Sir Henry Irving, was presented to the Tate Gallery in 1906 by Mr. J. J. Duveen. Opinion rages around it, and it enjoys the distinction . . . of being the best-hated picture of the year. . . . There is no attempt to idealize the subject, no thought of giving us Lady Macbeth herself; it is strictly and limitedly Miss Ellen Terry in that particular part, made as real underneath her stage artificiality as the painter knows how to make her. In fact, it is a tour de force of realism applied to the artificial, the actress caught and fixed, not as the individuality assumed, but as herself seen through and outside of the assumption. . . . This portrait will always remain eminent among his productions as one of the most characteristic specimens of his bold and learned mannerism pushed to its extremity.—Saturday Review. Who can forget the Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, that was manifestly the most important painting of 1889, and dominated the New Gallery, even as it reigned supreme amid far more distinguished company in the Exposition de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, at the Champ de Mars in 1890? Critics said it was not like Miss Terry, that it represented no incident in the play, but that the bondage of old tradition is burst with volcanic force has been naturally a shock to many sensitive souls. Brutal in its vigor, daring to the verge of reckless charlatanism, it yet escaped all perils, and was a splendid victory for the new school. . “Letters to Living Artists.” Seems to have been studied in a theatrical spasm of rare force. This start- ling piece has more of the Lyceum spectacle about it than of Shakespeare or Lady Macbeth.—The Athenaeum. The picture of me is nearly finished and I think it magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful.—Ellen Terry’s Diary, 1888. Ere COVEN DRY 2pAd MORE, ESQ, Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, London, and William Heinemann, Ltd., London OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES SIR HENRY IRVING Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1889. — A sketch. Called a tour de force of clever brushwork. As a likeness it was said to approach caricature, the strongly marked physiognomy of the sitter being emphasized. A good but pitiless sort of likeness—The Athenaeum. Everybody hates Sargent’s head of Henry. Henry also. I like it, but not altogether. I think it perfectly wonderfully painted and like him, only not at his best by any means. There sat Henry, and there by his side the picture, and I could scarce tell one from t’other. Henry looked white, with tired eyes, and holes in his cheeks, and bored to death! And there was the pic- ture with white face, tired eyes, holes in the cheeks, and boredom in every line. Sargent tried to paint his smile and gave it up.—Ellen Terry’s Diary. MRS. GEORGE GRIBBLE Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1889. A stylistic portrait of a lady wearing a blue fox boa; it was characteris- tically notable for the breadth and skill of the execution displayed. ‘The drawing and construction of the head and neck were particularly com- mended. Really lively and spontaneous brushwork, and delicate aerial color lift the dress and surroundings to the level of poetical still life Saturday Review. GEORGE HENSCHEL Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1889; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1890; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899. This likeness of one of Sargent’s musical friends is a simple bust, but with an animation and a tilt of the head that is most characteristic and which gives it a pervading impression of lifelikeness. Mr. Sargent shows us Mr. Henschel’s head with a style that may be called a lively commentary on the character of the forms he treats. Saturday Review. A daring piece of work; those who have struggled with the difficulties of a life-size face will appreciate the hit-or-miss cleverness of it best. The Spectator. 153 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT PORTRAIT OF DOCTOR CARROLL DUNHAM Louis B. McCagg collection Exhibited at National Academy of Design, New York, 1898; at Pennsyl- vania Academy, 1899; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Painted in 1889-1890. MRS. R. H. DERBY Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1889; at portrait exhibition in aid of the Orthopedic Hospital, New York, 1898; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. ST. MARTIN’S SUMMER Exhibited at New English Art Club, Dudley Gallery, London, 1889; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1890; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Evidently painted under the direct inspiration of Claude Monet, but . none the worse for that.— Magazine of Art. A MORNING WALK | Exhibited at New English Art Club, Dudley Gallery, London, 1889. Somewhat unpleasing in color . . . infinite cleverness . . . scintillates with sunlight—Magazine of Art. M. PAUL HELLEU AND HIS WIFE Brooklyn Museum Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1892. An outdoor scene painted in the late summer of 1889, at Fladbury, near Pershore, Worcestershire. The right center foreground of the canvas is occupied by the figure of the noted French dry-point etcher, who is busily at work on a canvas which is propped up before him. His bearded face is mostly concealed by a straw hat. To the extreme right of the canvas is seen the figure of Mme. Helleu reclining on the ground and leaning against her husband’s shoulder. Her face also is shaded by a large straw hat. ‘These straw hats supply the high lights of the composition. The costumes are those of the end of the nineteenth century. The figures are placed in a surround- ing tangle of rushes on the banks of the Avon. Behind them is a red canoe 154 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES which furnishes the strongest color note in the picture, as well as a definite diagonal cross-cutting of the composition. The atmospheric impression of the painting is that of a somewhat misty afternoon shade. Canvas: 25 x 29% inches. ae Dy OF A BUST AT LILLE Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899. That caressing instinct for delicacy of linear effect which a long time ago he showed to such beguiling purpose in the sketch he painted of the wax bust at Lille attributed to Raphael.—Royal Cortissoz. JAVANESE DANCER Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1891; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899. A full-length and life-size study of one of the Javanese dancing girls seen -at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889. The flat-footed, flat-handed action of the extreme East—a grace that has nothing to do with Raphael—is rendered with a delightful, amused and sympathetic appreciation.—Alice Meynell. MRS. KISSAM Mrs. George Vander bilt collection Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1890; at one hundred and twelfth exhibi- tion Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1917; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916-1917. Has the interest of an effort to catch a quick expression. The lady, at three- quarters length, standing, is dressed in a voluminous gown of reddish lilac silk, décolleté, with elbow-length sleeves; her ornaments including a pearl necklace. She lifts her skirt with her jewelled fingers, as if in the act of making a curtsey. She is smiling, rather shyly, with a twist of her upper lip, which shows the white row of teeth; there is a suggestion of roguish laugh- ter mixed with shyness in the dark eyes. We fully admit the power and the uncompromising truth which are shown in such a picture as the “Portrait of a Lady,” by Mr. Sargent, the American painter, whom we hope to be allowed to claim as almost a naturalized Englishman.—London Times. 155 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT BENJAMIN P. KISSAM Mrs. Arthur C. Train’s collection Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Painted in 1890. ROBERT HARRISON, ESQ. Painted in 1890. PORTRATIVS TUDY, Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1890. Conveys in a remarkable degree the action of the figure. In the steep garden of a country house a tall young girl stands posing for the artist. She humps her shoulders and sticks out her chin, with defiant arms akimbo, but there she stands and will stand as long as oil and canvas hold together. It is ugly; it is a caricature; but it lives-—Saturday Review. EDWIN BOOTH The Players, New York Head and bust. Full front view. The eyes are turned to the sitter’s right. Painted about 1890. The tragedian was at that time fifty-seven years old. He died in 1893, in the clubhouse of The Players, which he had founded in 1888. SKETCH OF EDWIN BOOTH Fairchild collection Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits, Copley Hall, Boston, 1896; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1916. The original sketch for the portrait in the possession of ‘The Players, New York. It was painted in three-quarters of an hour. About 1890. EDWIN BOOTH | Mrs. Elmhurst collection LAWRENCE BARRETT The Players, New York Exhibited at National Academy of Design, New York, 1890. Star actor and manager; he was closely associated with Edwin Booth dur- ing the last five or six years of the latter’s life, and wrote the lives of Edwin Forrest and Edwin Booth. 156 THE HONORABLE LAURA LISTER Collection of Lady Lovat, London Reproduced from the photogravure by courtesy of William Heinemann, Ltd., London OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES JOSEPH JEFFERSON The Players, New York Exhibited at National Academy of Design, New York, 1890; at New English Art Club, London, 1893. — Depicts the actor in the part of Doctor Pangloss in “The Heir-at-Law.” Half-length; seated; the head crowned by a huge powdered wig; the eyes wide open and staring; the mouth set in a dogmatic manner, yet with a hint of underlying humor. It is a remarkably combined presentation of the actor himself and the personage of the drama. Engraved by Henry Wolf for the Century Magazine, June, 1896. SKETCH OF JOSEPH JEFFERSON Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1916 and 1924; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916-1917; at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1922. This rapidly made and loosely executed portrait study of the famous actor’s head is of amazing vitality. The expression of the keen, staring eyes and the humorous mouth is especially remarkable. It is the actor, rather than the man, yet in Jefferson’s case the two were almost identical. It is very true to a certain phase of his stage presence. SENATOR HENRY CABOT LODGE Exhibited at nineteenth annual exhibition of the Society of American Artists, New York, 1897; at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1898; at the Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at the second biennial exhibition of oil paintings by contemporary American artists, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1908-1909. Painted in 1890. MOTHER AND CHILD Livingston Davis collection Exhibited at National Academy of Design, New York, 1890; at Society of American Artists, New York, 1891; at Boston Art Museum, 1891; at World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at loan exhibition of por- traits of women, Boston, 1895; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1896; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Worcester Art Museum, 1909; at Boston Art Museum, 1916, 1919, 1924. 157 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT The portrait of Mrs. Edward L. Davis and her son, Livingston Davis, painted in 1890, is full-length, life-size, and shows the two figures stand- ing. The lady, who wears black with a touch of white at the throat, has thrown her left arm about her little boy’s neck. He in turn holds his right arm about his mother’s waist. He wears a broad-brimmed straw hat and a white sailor suit. He is a very charming young lad with brown hair and eyes and an honest, sober glance. One of the best of Sargent’s works of this period. A work in which the artist has risen above his art, and, with keen sympa- thetic insight, has rendered, through consummate skill, a virile inter- pretation of gentle character, which, because of its truth, must prove enduring.—Leila Mechlin. MISS KATHERINE PRATT Frederick §. Pratt collection Exhibited at New Salon, Paris, 1890; at World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1894; at loan exhibition of portraits of women, Boston, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1910-1911; at Wor- cester Art Museum, 1914; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Boston Art Museum, 1916 and 1924. Half-length; in a white muslin dress; with a string of amber beads around the neck; eyes turned to left; landscape background. One hand is lifted to her bosom, the fingers just touching her necklace. The position of both hands is to be remarked, as well as the contributory significance they have in the revelation of personality. The realization of a living and breathing personality. The attitude of maidenly unconsciousness, one hand resting on her side while the fingers of the other lightly and listlessly touch the circle of gold beads that clasp the throat, is “felt”? with a sensitiveness and artistic insight that are marks of a high order of creative work. There is much that is psychic in this inter- pretation of a human being.— Review of Reviews. PORTRAIT SKETCH Frederick §. Pratt collection Exhibited at exhibition of contemporary American paintings owned in Worcester County, Worcester Art Museum, 1914. 158 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES GARDEN SKETCH Frederick §. Pratt collection Exhibited at exhibition of contemporary American paintings owned in Worcester County, Worcester Art Museum, 1914. MRS. FRANCIS H. DEWEY Exhibited at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1912-1913; at seventeenth international exhibition Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1913; at exhibition of contemporary American paintings owned in Worcester County, Wor- cester Art Museum, 1914. Showing what might perhaps be termed the Manet influence of simplifi- cation of mass, this portrait study, rendered with almost startling directness and yet wonderful insight and penetration, is found to be very moving as well as beautiful—Art and Progress. Of compelling power and subtlety. . . . The simplicity of its composition, the daring contrasts of color, the rapidity and breadth of the execution, conjoined with an amazing delicacy in the modelling of the brows and the flesh of the face, correspond to the meditative richness and fullness of a repressed temperament in a personage who seems finely Latin rather than Anglo-Saxon.—Worcester Telegram. MRS. AUGUSTUS P. LORING Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1891; at Boston Art Museum, 1891; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1891; at Society of American Artists, 1891; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1916; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Three-quarters length; life-size. The lady is in white, and she is sitting on a white chair out of doors. Her oval face wears a fatigued and disturbed expression. The coloring of this piece is pure and luminous; the flesh tones are especially fine. Autumn foliage in the background. GEORGE PEABODY George A. Peabody collection Exhibited at Copley Hall, Boston, 1898 and 1899. Painted in 1890. PETER CHARDON BROOKS Mrs. Saltonstall’s collection Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1891; at Modern Painters exhibi- tion, Boston, 1898; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; 159 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Boston Art Museum, 1925. Bust length; three-quarters front view. It depicts the florid complexion, curling hair, and gray moustache of the sitter with an apt and fluent touch. Painted at West Medford in October, 1890. MRS. PETER C. BROOKS Mrs. Saltonstall’s collection Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits of women, Copley Hall, Boston, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1915 and 1925. Painted at West Medford in October, 1890. MRS. RICHARD M. SALTONSTALL Saltonstall collection Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits of women, Copley Hall, Boston, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1925. Painted at West Medford in October, 1890. A tall canvas, showing the figure of a lady in a pink summer gown, hold- ing a white lace parasol in her hand, and wearing a large garden hat of light-green straw. A striking effect; although the picture lacks distinction in color. Mrs. Saltonstall is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter C. Brooks. CARMENCITA Luxembourg Museum, Paris Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1890; at Royal Academy, 1891; at exhibition of American art in Paris, 1919. Full-length figure. The famous Spanish dancer, in a rich silk costume of orange and black, elaborately embroidered, stands with her right foot slightly advanced, and her right arm akimbo, in an attitude of jaunty self- assurance, which is matched by the professional confidence of her facial expression. One of Sargent’s most celebrated works. Painted in New York, in 1890. For ever Carmencita stands waiting for the beginning of the music... . In Carmencita we have that living beauty from which, after all, a dreamer must take every one of his dreams.—T.. Martin Wood. As brilliant and as clever as it is at first repellant. . . . The picture kills everything on the wall, and surpasses for strength almost every modern picture I have ever seen.—M. H. Spielmann. 160 ~" Copyright, The Art Institute of Chicago MRS. GEORGE SWINTON My. OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES Her feet, marvellously painted, seem to twinkle with movement. The pose of the head and the treatment of the draperies are admirable; the hands alone leave something to be desired.—Saturday Review. What one gets from it is, in the first place, an extraordinary sense of vital- ity; this, one is half inclined to say, is not a picture, it is the living being itself, and when the music strikes up she will bound away in the dance. London Times. SKETCH OF CARMENCITA SINGING Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Painted in 1890. MRS. COMYNS CARR Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1890; at Knoedler Gallery, New York, 1924. . A rapid sketch. IGHTHAM MOAT HOUSE Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1890. An unusual sketch, in cool tones, of an ancient Elizabethan house in Sussex, with a group of people playing at bowls on the lawn, towards evening. The figures are brushed in with the most admirable suggestion of their action; and they are in precisely the right relation to their green and purple landscape setting. The sense of space . . . which the picture gives, is enormous; the cool freshness most restful and delightful; the drawing of the figures is more than good; their pose and composition, and, as it were, incidental character, leave, as a house agent would say, nothing to be desired. Most admirable of all is the impression of reality which the scene conveys. The painter entirely disappears from sight, and as for the manner by which he has arrived at his result, we neither know nor care anything. The result is there—a vivid impression of a real evening with real figures enjoying the coolness. Harry Quilter. BEATRICE GOELET Robert Goelet collection Exhibited at thirteenth exhibition of Society of American Artists, New 161 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT York, 1891; at loan exhibition of portraits, National Academy of Design, New York, 1895. This is generally and justly regarded as one of the artist’s most flawless masterpieces. It portrays a very young maiden, at full length, standing by the side of a high gilt cage in which a cockatoo is seen on his perch. The little child is a quaint and picturesque figure in her long skirt, which comes down to the floor, with her pretty pale golden hair tied with a knot of pink ribbon, her tiny hands loosely joined before her with the finger tips touch- ing, and, above all, in her sober and demure sidelong glance, which has all the mysterious and captivating nature of a childish reverie, half wistful and half wondering, but not in the least afraid. The gown is of silk with stripes of pink and gray. Engraved by Henry Wolf for the Century Magazine, June, 1896. A painting in which the innocent sweetness of childhood unfolds itself like a flower.—Royal Cortissoz. Beatrice is one of the timid little spirits whose rare charm only a great painter could divine.-—Estelle M. Hurll. All of his technical skill, all of his taste, all of the sentiment and emo- tional feeling that may be in his personality, seem to be shown in his beau- tiful child portrait, Beatrice. . . . The naive look, the childish character, are given with convincing drawing and exquisite coloring. It shows the painter at his very best, and it must always be accounted one of his pro- nounced successes.—John C. Van Dyke. The charm seems to lie in the marvelous excellence of the painter’s hand- work, expressing, as it does, so perfectly the sweet attraction of beautiful childhood.—William A. Coffin. Mr. Sargent had seen not only form and color with clearness and acute- ness, but also the baby soul behind them; and he had reproduced them all se beautifully that, when the tears came in one’s eyes from sheer delight, it was hard to tell whether emotion was more touched by the work of nature or the work of art. Yet when we reflect a minute, and say again, a pearl among babies portrayed in a pearl among pictures, we feel that art must be allowed the chief share in the result. . . . To art, not nature, will be due the credit when in later years this child shall win an immortality like that with which a Velasquez or a Van Dyck endowed the royal children of his brush. I should hesitate to say that this is the finest picture Mr. Sargent 162 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES has painted, but it is one of the very finest, and is certainly the loveliest of them all.—M. G. Van Rensselaer. MRS. THOMAS LINCOLN MANSON Collection of Mrs. K. Van Rensselaer Painted in 1891. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1891; at loan exhibition of por- traits of women in New York, 1913; at the Sargent loan exhibition in Boston, 1899; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924 and 1925. Nearly full-length; seated on a sofa; the left arm and hand extended over the back of the sofa, and the right elbow resting on the sofa arm with the hand drooping. Full skirt of a changeable, striped brown silk, shot with greenish and reddish lights; closely fitting bodice of red silk, décolleté, with elbow-length sleeves: the style of the period interestingly documented. An able characterization, somewhat objective in the detachment of its manner, notably firm and precise in construction. Every touch on the face is expressive; there is actuality in every line of the hand and of the long, slender arm; while the painting of the dress of thin silk is of surprising lightness and truth. London Times. In conception and in execution one of the most individual and triumphant works that have come from the great painter’s hand. The admirable lady- like characterization shown in this charming figure seated on a square English sofa, clad in a gown of shot silk with stripes, and notes of black and cherry red, is one of the best and most sympathetic portrayals the artist has ever achieved. . . . It is an admirable piece of color, and is in general effect one of the most unified and harmonious compositions in the whole list of the artist’s works.—William A. Coffin. MRS. AUGUSTUS HEMENWAY Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits of women, Copley Hall, Boston, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1915, 1916, 1919, and 1924; at Grand Central Art Gal- leries, New York, 1924. Signed and dated 1891. Half-length; full front. A notably fine example in the painter’s simplest, most direct and most brilliant manner. The head is that of a beautiful young woman, with rich transparent complexion, fine lustrous eyes, and 163 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT extremely handsome dark auburn hair. She is shown in the act of adjusting a single white water lily in the opening of the black waist she is wearing; and the position and action of the hands are admirably indicated with a touch of natural elegance and grace. This work easily takes place among Sargent’s best heads of any period; its condition to-day is as sound and fresh as on the day it was painted. No one has encountered the beauty of woman’s face more casually than Sargent; no one has made us realize 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. T. Martin Wood. MISS FAIRCHILD Charles Fairchild collection Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits, Boston, 1896; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1916. Sketch portrait of a young child, painted in one evening. LADY HAMILTON Exhibited at St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1891; at Royal Academy, 1896; at the Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Pennsyl- vania Academy, 1905. The American wife of General Sir Ian Hamilton is depicted sitting in an armchair and at three-quarters length. The skirt of her gown is white satin; a fluffy creation of white tulle or illusion covers her neck and shoulders; she holds a long closed fan in her left hand. A beautiful face looks out of this picture, confronting the world with an expression of perfect poise and serenity. he costume is painted with marvellous aptitude and breadth, and a remarkably sensitive feeling for texture. Quite admirable, full of character and spirit; as a picture, too, it is first- rate.-—The Athenaeum. The whole composition, in color, arrangement, and execution, breathes a spirit of refinement that is as charming as it is rare. If any other painter can paint such lovely pictures of women as this, we are at a loss to think of his name.—William A. Coffin. Now turn to Mr. Sargent’s picture and look at the lady’s satin dress. What a beautiful substance mere paint has become. How it flows, and changes its 164 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES light and its color, subservient to the artist’s will, while remaining beauti- ful in itself. The solvent of an alchemist seems to have made some sea- shell plastic, and compelled it to take the billowy form and subtle color of the dress in shadow where it flows in front of the warm flesh tones of the arm. Again, the gauzy stuff round the neck seems to be painted with some totally different material, so responsive is paint to Mr. Sargent’s hand. Besides the painting, the masterly drawing is conspicuous. H.S. in The Spectator. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1891. A remarkable portrait is this of an unnamed young girl of about fourteen, in white, sitting in a church pew, with her finely painted slender hands clasped in her lap. Her soft brown hair falls on the shoulders; her great brown eyes, bold yet shy, are fixed on the spectator. Dark wainscoting in the background. In a picture of 1891 a most enchanting young girl, seen full-face, sat bolt- upright upon a plain high wooden chair, in front of dark wainscoting, looking dreamily and unsuspectingly before her out of widely opened, brown eyes like those of a gazelle-—Richard Muther. The rare qualities of this painting are unlikely to appeal to any but painters or those who have studied painting in a painter-like way. These qualities are grasp, frankness, certainty of vision, simplicity and directness of exe- cution. The grasp is verifiable almost from the moment of entering the exhibition. The portrait carries across the gallery out into the court; it is painted to tell at the right distance for a life-sized figure—not piecemeal for the microscope.—T he Spectator. Among the‘portraits, by far the most wonderful in its way, is Mr. John S. Sargent’s presentment of a young, white-robed lady, seated bolt-upright on a bare wooden settle fixed against a carved oaken wainscoting. She gazes straight out of the canvas at the spectator, with an extraordinary, almost crazy intensity of life in her wide-open brown eyes. . . . The irresistible - force and fascination of this singular embodiment of youthful vitality cannot be gainsaid.—M. H. Spielmann. LIFE STUDY OF AN EGYPTIAN GIRL = Charles Deering collection Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1891; at World’s Colum- bian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899; 165 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915; at Boston Art Mu- seum, 1916; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916-1917. The full-length nude figure of a slender young Egyptian model who is braiding her long hair in a pigtail. A superb studio study of the nude, masterly alike in strength, truth, and grace of drawing, and exhaustive painting of the golden flesh. Magazine of Art. Sargent was an admirable linear draughtsman before he was a painter, and now is an exquisite linear draughtsman when he cares to be so. He is a draughtsman of the nude figure as well as of the head, as his “Egyptian Girl” should remind us if it were necessary. It is his profound knowledge of form that renders his virtuosity possible—Kenyon Cox. EGYPTIAN INDIGO DYERS Exhibited at Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, London, 1898; at Sar- gent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899. Sketch. A brilliant and summary impression, which is rather tame in color. EGYPTIAN WOMAN Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Sketch of the profile of a hooded woman wearing a necklace of coins. BEDOUIN ARAB Sir Philip Sassoon collection Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at the Goupil Salon of Modern British Art, London, 1924. Sketch. A stern face with piercing eyes, the head swathed in a voluminous white burnouse. A living character study . . . with the magnificent insight and paint- quality so well known in this great artist—Amelia Defries. ASTARTE Fenway Court, Boston Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. This is the original sketch for the far-famed figure of Astarte in the mural 166 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES decoration of the Boston Public Library. It was formerly in the collection of Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A., to whom it was presented by Sargent. It was painted in one day. . . » Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians Called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs; In Sion also not unsung, where stood Her temple on the offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king whose heart, though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul. “Paradise Lost.” SKETCH OF THE ERECHTHEUM Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. SKETCH OF THE TEMPLE OF DENDERAH Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. SUNSET AT CAIRO Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Sketch. SKETCH OF A FELLAH WOMAN Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. SKETCH OF SANTA SOFIA Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. SKETCH AT CORFU Exhibited at Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1918. “Choice work.” “Very charming.” MISS HELEN DUNHAM James H. Dunham collection Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1892; at World’s Colum- bian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at loan exhibition of portraits, National 167 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Academy of Design, New York, 1895; at nineteenth exhibition Society of American Artists, New York, 1897; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Tenderness of color in the simple painting of the white draperies and sympathetic translation of character.—William A. Coffin. Painted in 1891-1892. SELF-PORTRAIT National Academy of Design, New York Sketch, bust length, the face nearly full front, heavily shadowed on the right side. PORTRAIT STUDY Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1892. MRS. HUGH HAMMERSLEY Exhibited at the New Gallery, London, 1893; at the Sargent loan exhi- bition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at the Carnegie Institute international exhibition, Pittsburgh, 1923. Full-length. The lady is shown sitting on a square sofa upholstered in pinkish-brown silk. Her lips are slightly parted in a half-smile, and the expression about the eyes is agreeably animated. She wears a gown of carmine velvet, décolleté, with a long train, with lace at the neck and rich silver embroidery in a wide band at the bottom of the skirt. The room in which she is sitting is upholstered in white satin. Her head is held alertly, and she presses her left hand against the back of the sofa as if about to rise, perhaps to welcome a guest. Her feet, in pointed white satin slippers, are pressed the one on the other. Not beauty, exactly, but life, reality, an actual and captivating animation, are the keynotes of this extraordinary portrait Saturday Review. This is a thoroughly vigorous and extremely original piece of work, ad- mirable for its brilliancy and the harmony of its colors in high keys, which are most craftily disposed to harmonize with the luminous and yet solidly painted carnations of the lady. . . . The flesh painting may be called a wonder, so pure and deftly modelled are the features, bare arms and hands.—T he Athenaeum. A superb achievement. . . . It is a speaking face, a living figure, a bril- liant picture. . . . The picture is, indeed, like a charge in its suddenness 168 ASHER WERTHEIMER, ESQ. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London, and William Heinemann, Ltd., London ~\ OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES and bravura of attack. . . . It is a work of the imagination that sees its object for what it is, that presses close to it, that does not pass it off under some alien form of poetry or misfitting convention.—T he Spectator. A lady so vivacious that, though she is seated, she can be seated only mo- mentarily on the sofa which now holds her, and dressed in a robe of fullest rose-colored velvet, with silver lace and diamond stars. Mr. Sargent, though he has enjoyed painting the model, has enjoyed the accessories quite as much, and he has enjoyed perhaps most of all (since, I take it, he is but human), the delightful feat of distancing his contemporaries in sheer bril- liance, in sheer audacity, and in sheer chic. And his accomplishment of that feat I suppose there are few to contest.—Frederick Wedmore. MRS. GEORGE LEWIS Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1893. The lady is shown standing, with her hands folded before her, in a black dress trimmed with gold, against a tapestry of faded gold and rose. The portrait of Mrs. George Lewis . . . is of a kind that may commend itself even to the unimaginative picture-seer, to the person who is incapable of meeting the modern artist half-way. Yet it is attractive in technique, and at once agreeable and unflinching in its record of the model. Frederick Wedmore. MRS. TWOMBLY Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1893. Seated in a Louis XV interior. Wrought with his slashing brush in a very smart, aggressive manner, but not particularly interesting otherwise—Magazine of Art. MRS. JOHN J. CHAPMAN (NEE CHANLER) Collection of Mrs. Richard Aldrich Painted in 1893. Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits of women, National Academy of Design, New York, 1894; at Royal Academy, London, 1894; at the Roman Art exhibition, 1894; at the Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at the Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Half-length, seated, full front; in black satin dress, square-cut neck, with 169 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT puffed short sleeves. The hands are clasped, the right arm resting on a warm-colored, figured brocade sofa cushion. In the background are two old paintings hanging on the wall. Miss Chanler, afterwards Mrs. Chapman, looks up with a girlish face full of pathos and candor, and, as one observer suggests, she seems about to rise and go away, being merely arrested a moment by wonder. We have seen more interesting portraits than Mr. Sargent’s “Miss Chanler,” but even he has rarely been more true or vivid.—Saturday Review. Holds its own in virtue of the large comprehension that seizes on structural planes and gives to the value of different parts in a whole their just notation with economy and eloquence of execution. It is a skilful deploying in their due order of the forces of an impression.—The Spectator. Mr. Sargent maintains his great position as a portraitist by his picture of Miss Chanler, a picture, however, which at first sight may be disappointing to the spectator, but which improves prodigiously upon acquaintance. M. H. Spielmann. LADY AGNEW Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1893; at the Sargent loan exhibi- tion, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at international exhibition Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1924. } Three-quarters length. Seated in a big white armchair, with a background formed by a curtain of pale blue Japanese silk. The gown is white, and the waist is encircled by a mauve silk sash. The hair is dark, and the face is full of charm, the calm and candid gaze of the handsome eyes full of char- acter. Lady Agnew was the daughter of the Hon. G. C. Vernon and grand- daughter of the first Baron Lyveden. Her husband was Sir Andrew Noel Agnew, Bart., of Lochnaw Castle, Starnraer, Wigtownshire. One of the most refined works he has ever painted.—Royal Cortissoz. A work painted entirely under the impulse of personal feeling, and never- theless stamped with strange beauty.—Saturday Review. The charm of the picture emanates from every element in it. The figure is graceful, dignified, but not haughty, and the ensemble is so charming that we must conclude, without knowing the sitter, that the artist has never suc- ceeded better than in this work in painting a portrait of a lady and invest- ing his portrayal with the qualities that make her lovely. William A. Coffin. 170 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES For refinement, distinction, sensitiveness, what could be better than the beautiful portrait of Lady Agnew?—John C. Van Dyke. HOMER SAINT-GAUDENS Exhibited at World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1899 and 1900; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. The young son of the celebrated American sculptor, Augustus Saint- Gaudens. A notably handsome example of the painter’s portraits of young people. This adorable boy, about ten years of age, sits on a carved wooden straight-backed chair, with his arms dropped in front of him and his hands loosely clasped together. The pose is of unstudied naturalness, and is peculiarly boyish, as witness the position of the legs and feet. At the left, and slightly withdrawn from the foreground, a sketch of his mother, who is bending over a book, from which she is presumably reading aloud. This sketch, we are told, was introduced as an impromptu. It was a happy thought. The charming portrait of Homer Saint-Gaudens and his mother... . He, a little boy, in a black suit, sits nonchalantly leaning against the high back of his chair as he listens to the book that his mother is reading out loud. The wide-open eyes of the boy show the intensity of his interest, yet their dilated concentration is shadowed by some unconscious realization of physical stir or change about him. Perhaps the curtain rustled, or there was a step on the stair, and this division of involuntary and voluntary attention has flashed out in swift response.—Margaret Breuning. SIGNOR ANTONIO MANCINI National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome Exhibited at Biennial Exposition, Rome, 1924. Sketch portrait, painted in 1894, at the Villa Wertheimer, near Rome, and presented to the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, by Mr. Sargent, in 1924. It was painted in a little more than an hour. Signed. Inscription in Italian at bottom of canvas. A conspicuous feature of the work is the sitter’s left hand with its long, tapering fingers holding a cigar. Not many people even know that he discovered the Italian painter Mancini and brought him to England . . . won him the patronage of one of his own best patrons, Mrs. Hunter. He sends many of his friends to Mancini, 170 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT and he tells everybody that he would be happy if he could paint half as well as the Italian.—Rebecca Insley. HENRY ST.JOHN SMITH Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Museum, 1916. A remarkably fine head of a young man, painted with strong contrasts of light and shadow, and subtly yet solidly modelled. ITALIAN WITH ROPE Animated and amusing sketch of the head and hands of a merry young bell ringer, with dark tousled hair, dark moustache, and dark eyes shining with animal spirits. The laugh of the young man pulling a rope is perfectly national. Alice Meynell. CAPRI GIRL Study in oil of an interesting head in profile. The type is that swarthy, dark-eyed, dark-haired type which Sargent understands so well and em- ploys so often in his Italian and Spanish genre pictures. EGYPTIANS IN BONDAGE Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1894. ‘This was the lunette and a portion of the ceiling for the first section of the Boston Public Library decoration. PORTRAIT DEM. M.H. H. Exhibited at New Salon, Paris, 1894. THREE SKETCHES Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1894. A SKETCH Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1894. MISS ADA REHAN Collection of Mrs.G. M. Whitin Exhibited at Daly’s Theatre, New York, 1895; at National Academy of Design loan exhibition of portraits, New York, 1895; at New Gallery, 172 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES London, 1895; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1896; at loan exhibition of portraits, Copley Hall, Boston, 1896; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Worcester Art Museum, 1914; at Boston Art Museum, 1915; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1915; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Full-length. The actress is depicted standing, in a low-necked white satin dress, facing the left, but turning her head and looking towards the ob- server. She carries an open fan of white feathers in her hand. ‘Tapestry background. In this portrait Mr. Sargent reveals himself more completely than in any of his recent works as a clever rather than a great artist. In the sweep of the lines and the quality of the color a certain cold verve takes the place of that sentiment and ardor without which no art is really great. Saturday Review. Mr. J. S. Sargent’s whole length, in white satin, of Miss Ada Rehan, has the merit of being a most excellent likeness, the figure naturally posed and freely painted. It is scarcely Mr. Sargent’s highest class work, but it is attractive, freely expressed, and is an adornment to the gallery. M. Phipps Jackson. W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1895; at exhibition of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1896. The full-length figure of a slender, delicate looking young man, in a long dark topcoat, and with an ivory-handled walking stick in his left hand. His right hand is placed on his hip, arm akimbo. A sleeping dog lies at his feet. This portrait is of the writer of the children’s play entitled “Pinkie and the Fairies,” and of many successful and popular juvenile books, illus- trated by himself. Mr. Sargent’s power of dragging the truth out of a man’s superficial per- sonality, for good or evil, is again magnificently displayed. . . . There he is, living, for you to admire, to wonder, or to laugh at—it is the man himself.—M. H. Spielmann. COVENTRY PATMORE National Portrait Gallery, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1895. Mr. Sargent takes at times a sudden view, and thus makes permanent too singly one aspect of an often altering face. It seems to be so, for example, 173 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT in the portrait of Coventry Patmore, in which that great poet’s vitality wears an aspect too plainly of mere warfare.—Alice Meynell. Undoubtedly the most electrifying portrait in the Academy—we nearly wrote the most masterly painting—is Mr. Sargent’s kitkat of Mr. Cov- entry Patmore. . . . The drawing of the face in Mr. Sargent’s picture, the brilliant rendering of the mouth, indeed, of the whole mask, are hardly to be matched in any other work of the year.—M. H. Spielmann. What can be more vitally present than the picture of Coventry Patmore? The color values . . . seem well sustained, the head in relation to the white of collar and waistcoat, as well as of the strong darks in cravat and coat and lesser dark of background; while the composition, the placing of the figure in this limited area so as to leave the impression of gauntness and slenderness is most intelligently conceived.—Frank Fowler. SKETCH OF COVENTRY PATMORE Museum of Occidental Art, Tokio Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899. The sketch would be difficult to overpraise. More subtle in form and color and less assertive in manner than the finished picture, it is an admirable likeness and an astonishingly accomplished piece ef work. » Saturday Review. M. LEON DELAFOSSE Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1895; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899; at the New Salon, Paris, 1902; at Royal Academy, London, 1905. The eminent pianist, at three-quarters length, standing, nearly full front. A clear-eyed young man, with a candid and self-possessed look; his left hand, the slender fingers outspread, is placed against his hip, and is relieved against the dark coat. PORTRAIT DE MISSES XXX Exhibited at Paris Salon, 1895. THE DAUGHTER OF MRS. J. MONTGOMERY SEARS Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston 174 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES Art Museum, 1905; at loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1914; at Boston Art Museum, 1916. Full-length. The little girl, about five years of age, is dressed in white, and stands in the midst of a group of blue hydrangeas. The contrast fermed by these two tones makes a cool harmony, while the purity and freshness of the color and the crispness of the handling are noticeable. GARDINER G. HAMMOND Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1896; at Copley Hall, Boston, 1896 and 1899. MRS. ERNEST HILLS Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1895. PORTRAIT Jacob Wendell collection Exhibited at loan exhibition of portraits in aid of St. John’s Guild and the Orthopedic Hospital, National Academy of Design, New York, 1895. MRS. RUSSELL COOKE Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1895. RICHARD MORRIS HUNT Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt collection, Biltmore Distinguished American architect, brother of William Morris Hunt, the painter. He was the architect of Biltmore, the great Vanderbilt mansion in the style of the French castles, and the painting depicts him at full length, standing in the courtyard, with the lower portion of the famous spiral staircase, copied after the original in the Castle of Blois, in the background. He holds a long gray smock over his left shoulder, and his right hand is placed on the edge of a classical marble basin or well-head which occupies the left foreground. FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt collection, Biltmore Distinguished American landscape architect, whose notable creations in- cluded many of the most beautiful public parks in the cities of the United 175 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT States. His work in connection with the laying out of the grounds of Biltmore is not one of the least of his titles to fame. 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. Olmsted’s poetic face is so faithfully and sympathetically interpreted that his most intimate friends have nothing but praise for the work. William A. Coffin. GEORGE W. VANDERBILT Mrs. George W. Vander bilt collection, Biltmore Exhibited at one hundred and twelfth exhibition Pennsylvania Academy, 1917; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916-1917. Three-quarters length; standing. In the right hand he holds a closed book against his shoulder. Capitalist and late proprietor of the celebrated estate of Biltmore, near Asheville, N. C., a vast property of one hundred thousand acres of moun- tain land on the French Broad River. MRS. GEORGE W. VANDERBILT Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt collection, Biltmore PORTRAIT OF A LADY (MISS PRIESTLEY) Miss Emily Sargent’s collection Exhibited at the New English Art Club, 1896. A half-length portrait of a lady in a shot silk dress, a sort of red violet, the color known as puce. The face is pale, the chin is prominent and pointed. There were some Japanese characteristics in the sitter, and these have been emphasized. The eyes are long, and their look is distant; the eyebrows are high, arched and marked; the dark hair grows round the pale forehead with wiglike abruptness, and the painter has attempted no attenu- ation. The hands are placed upon the hips, the palms turned out. The back- ground is of a fine chocolate tone, which balances the various shades of the shot silk dress with a felicitous severity. I'wo red poppies are worn in the bodice. Gradually a pale-faced woman, with arched eyebrows, draws our eyes and fixes our thoughts. It is a portrait by Mr. Sargent, one of the best he has 176 MRS. ASHER WERTHEIMER Courtesy of the National Gallery, London ot; rr OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES painted. By the side of a fine Hals it might look small and thin, but nothing short of a fine Hals would affect its real beauty. My admiration for Mr. Sargent has often hesitated, but this picture completely wins me. It has all the qualities of Mr. Sargent’s best work; and it has something more; it is painted with that measure of calculation and reserve which is present in all work of the first order of merit. . . . The rendering is full of the beauty of incomparable skill. . . . Mr. Sargent’s drawing speaks without hesita- tion a beautiful, decisive eloquence, the meaning never in excess of the expression, nor is the expression ever redundant. . . . The portrait tells us that he has learned the last and most difficult lesson—how to omit. . . . A beautiful work, certainly; I should call it a perfect work were it not that the drawing is a little too obvious; in places we can detect the manner; it does not coule de source like the drawing of the very great masters. George Moore. RIGHT HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1896. Three-quarters length; standing. He wears a dark frock coat with button- hole bouquet. The left arm and hand fall to his side; the right hand rests on a sheaf of papers on a desk. The alertness of the figure and the keenness of the face are well suggested; but the pose is rather conventional, and, as one of the critics puts it, the picture seems to have written across it, “portrait of a statesman.” An unusually fine example of the painter’s talent. His head of the Colonial Secretary leaves nothing to be desired.—M. P. J. in Magazine of Art. A difficult subject, susceptible of subtler treatment than he has bestowed on it. The picture is a striking example of the way in which an able and dash- ing painter can narrowly miss a considerable success.— The Athenaeum. Mr. Sargent has of late been struggling almost fiercely against any external aid from such allies as arrangement of light, quality of paint, and tone, and studied composition. . . . In his portrait of Mr. Chamberlain the lack of these qualities is to be regretted —Saturday Review. PORTRAIT OF A LADY Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1896. A graceful, simple, standing, three-quarters length figure, dressed in white and wearing a red cape. Brilliant and spirited in all its technical elements. 177 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT MRS. COLIN HUNTER Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1896. Wife of the well-known British marine painter. SIR GEORGE LEWIS Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1896. PAVEMENT OF ST. MARK’S Exhibited at Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Sketch. MRS. CARL MEYER AND HER CHILDREN Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1897; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Paris Universal Exposition, 1900. Mrs. Meyer, a young and pretty woman, of refined elegance, with hair tinged with gray, and blue eyes, is seated at the right, in the corner of a Louis XV sofa, the framework of which is gilt and the back covered with Aubusson tapestry. She is clad in an evening gown, with an overskirt of gleaming peach-blossom satin, with the underskirt of the same color cov- ered with lace, the waistband and shoulder bows of black silk. The corsage also is trimmed with lace, and the points of the little rose-pink slippers are visible below the edge of the skirt where the feet rest on a footstool. In the left hand she holds a fan, while the right rests on the back of the sofa and clasps the hand of her little son, who leans on the sofa, with his sister be- hind him looking over his shoulder. Both children are dark in type. The boy wears a suit of silver-gray velvet with sleeves of mauve velvet. The back- ground consists of a drawing-room with a flowered carpet and a wainscot of oaken panelling with rococo moldings. ‘The whole canvas is painted in light tints, and is one of the painter’s finest examples of virtuosity, the group having all of his ease, spontaneity and freshness of style in a supreme degree. A glittering tour de force. That is of the very essence of its period. The lady on her sofa, the two children behind her, seem almost to slide toward you from the decorative wall in the background. The whole affair is “posed” with an intentional elegance that only needed to be a little more strained to recall what is “smart” in Helleu or bizarre in Boldini. Only in “this portrait you are brought back to . . . Sargent’s imperial command 178 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES over his instruments. . . . There is only one word to explain technical powers like his, the word “genius.”—Royal Cortissoz. A capital and thoroughly modern piece is the life-size, whole-length, bright and brilliant portrait of Mrs. C. Meyer, which is Mr. J. S. Sargent’s masterpiece of the year; an excellent likeness and most charming as a © painting. Its strongest point perhaps is the treatment of the rich, pure and delicate bloom of the carnations.—T he Athenaeum. When he is happily inspired by a thoroughly congenial motive, like the group of Mrs. Meyer and her two children, the exquisiteness, delicacy, re- finement and loveliness of his work are unspeakably and unsurpassably great. It has the fragility and the complexion of a flower.—W. H. Downes. THE HON. LAURA LISTER Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1897; at the Sargent loan exhibi- tion, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Portrait of the five-year-old daughter of Lord Ribblesdale. The little maid, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, is represented at full length standing beside a pedestal on which is a large antique Etruscan jar of dull gray and green, and her figure is relieved against a background of rocks. The picture is in a sober gray color scheme. The girl’s right hand rests lightly on the edge of the pedestal. She is quaintly dressed in a full black satin skirt which reaches to the ground, with a white waist, ample white mull sleeves, and a mobcap with white lace and frills, which covers her curling hair. Her expression is at once delightfully demure and amusingly dignified. The pose is child- like and charming; and the execution is broad and simple. The Honorable Laura Lister has become, like Whistler’s ‘Miss Alexander,” a world favorite, to class with such masterpieces as Velasquez’s ‘“‘Princess Margaret.” . . . The shy sweetness with which she regards you out of her big eyes is inexpressibly winning.—Estelle M. Hurll. Among the pictures of children, the portrait of the Hon. Laura Lister takes its place with the most beautiful painted in all centuries since it was first held worth while to paint that childhood which the fathers and mothers of old were in haste to see securely past.—Alice Meynell. MRS. GEORGE SWINTON Art Institute of Chicago Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1897; at ninety-first exhibition Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1917; at Art Institute of Chicago, 1922. 179 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Full-length; standing by a chair upholstered in silk of a shade somewhere beyond rose and orange. Beautiful in color, and exceedingly fine in draw- ing. Mrs Swinton, née E. Ebsworth, became the wife of the Hon. Captain George Swinton, one of the king’s heralds. She had been an opera singer. Canvas: 90 x 49 inches. Extract from a letter written by Mrs. Swinton: “The picture was painted in 1896-1897. It took a great many sittings, as we wasted a lot of time playing the piano and singing, instead of getting on with the picture. It was exhibited at the New Gallery, I think, in 1897.” One wonders if any one else would have painted the left arm—or rather left it out—with such a complete feeling of the solid structure beneath the loose scarf. . . . It is by these resources of the art of suggestion that the painter has made his canvas seem alive, as much as by the more definitely painted parts such as the face.—H. S. in The Spectator. It is a pyrotechnical display of great sweeping brush-strokes. There are blues, greens, pinks, lavenders—every tint of the pearl in its most glowing display of color, so often concealed, but in this case rapturously revealed. Rose V.S. Berry. MRS. GEORGE BATTEN, SINGING Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1897; at New Salon, Paris, 1902. Half-length. The lady is shown in the act of singing a song, with her mouth wide open and her eyes closed. An example of the portrait of a moment that is full of spirit and action is that of Mrs. George Batten, which breathes the last note of a song—a song of Tosti’s, one might guess.—Alice Meynell. MR. AND MRS. I. N. PHELPS-STOKES Exhibited at New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Boston. Full-length; standing; the lady, a little in advance of her husband, is in a white linen summer dress and short black jacket with puffed shoulders; she holds a stiff straw hat against her right thigh. The effect of unusual height is enhanced by the arrangement of the figures with their elongated per- pendicular lines and the relatively narrow shape of the canvas. In the amusing picture of Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps-Stokes, Mrs. Phelps’s starched white linen skirt, snug black belt, tightly fitting shirtwaist (it was 180 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES not a blouse then), and hard sailor hat held in the hand, give the earlier version of sports clothes. But the lovely face with its dark hair and smiling eyes can laugh at fashions past or present, triumphant in its own charm. Margaret Breuning in New York Evening Post. HENRY G. MARQUAND Metropolitan Museum, New York Three-quarters length. Mr. Marquand, second president of the Metropoli- tan Museum of Art, 1890—1902, is shown sitting by a table, in an attitude of repose, with his head resting lightly against his left hand. His right arm is over the back of the chair, the hand falling by his side; the figure and face are to the front, illumined by a strong light from the left. His dress is black, relieved against a gray ground and an olive-colored drapery. Gift of the trustees, 1897. Signed. Canvas: 3914 x 50) inches. It reveals a certain assertiveness in its utterance, an intensity of nervous force rather than of intellectual or sympathetic effort, a brilliant epitome rather than a profound study.—Charles H. Caffin. A performance of a very high order. . . . The color is swept in with much facility; the arrangement of tone is refined and reposeful; while the painting of the flesh is broad and certain, showing knowledge and equip- ment of a man who is thoroughly trained from the foundation upward. Arthur Hoeber. How well he has emphasized the facts of the spare figure, the thin, nervous hand, the refined if somewhat weary face! How very effective the placing of the figure in the chair, the turn of the head, and again that thin hand against which the head rests. Every physical feature is just as it should be. John C, Van Dyke. COUNTESS A. Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1898; at Paris Salon of 1898. FRANCIS CRANMER PENROSE Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898; at Sargent loan exhibition, Boston, 1899; at Venice, 1907. This gentleman was president of the Royal Institute of British Architects; author of a celebrated book on ““The Principles of Athenian Architecture” ; and he made the famous measurements of the Parthenon. The portrait de- picts an interesting type of scholarly character with candor and insight. 181 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Everything about the work contributes to the revelation of a personality— the pose, the clothes, the hands, and the hair, all have their part in the evidence given, which is final. In its vigorous characterization, powerful and harmonious painting, and admirable breadth and force, it is quite admirable. As a likeness it is simply perfect, as the picture of such a sitter ought to be.—The Athenaeum. A thoughtful, reserved, and very quietly painted portrait of an elderly man. . . . It isa notable performance, simple, unaffected, and impressive, and different from any other portrait by Mr. Sargent that we remember. ~ William A. Coffin. LORD WATSON Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898. Full-length figure standing with left hand resting on a sculptured oak pilaster and right hand holding a letter. Admirably satisfactory drawing, lighting, and sober coloring. ASHER WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898; at the New York portrait exhibition, 1898; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Paris Universal Exposition, 1900. Painted to celebrate Mr. Wertheimer’s silver wedding anniversary in 1898. A very celebrated canvas, portraying a well-known London picture dealer, with his shrewd, sagacious, canny personality, which is pictured in the most pungent and incisive manner. A remarkable realization of a pro- nounced type of character. The brilliancy of the rendering of Mr. Sargent’s sitter is a veritable tri- umph; the character so subtly caught, the lighting throughout so masterly, clear and free, the whole so well imagined, even to the poodle with his tongue lolling out, which tongue reveals almost as much dexterity in its drawing and color as is apparent in the face of its owner. Magazine of Art. A canvas so instinct with life that no criticism was able to withstand the shock. Silence is even now the most discreet praise for what is surely one of the great portraits of the world, the only modern picture which challenges the Doria Velasquez at Rome—Innocent X.—Robert Ross. Canvas: 57 X 37 inches. 182 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES MRS. ASHER WERTHEIMER Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898. This portrait was evidently not considered entirely satisfactory, and the artist painted another and a much more successful portrait of Mrs. Wert- heimer, which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1904. The latter work, a pendant to the portrait of Mr. Wertheimer, is the one in the present group of the Wertheimer family portraits. Canvas: 62 x 40 inches. Must be admitted one of Mr. Sargent’s failures—a failure, at least, by comparison with the others. It lacks not only the character of the sitter but of the artist, and might have been executed by some other skilful and fashionable painter of our time.—Robert Ross. MRS. RALPH CURTIS Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Full-length; standing with her back turned to a round table, with the hands, the fingers turned under, resting upon it. The position is graceful, and the drawing is excellent. The figure seems extremely tall. ‘The color scheme is very cool; and, owing to the peculiar lighting, the painting of the head, neck and arms is lacking in luminosity. The ball gown worn by the lady is a close-fitting one of a sort of light steel gray, with pinkish tinges showing in the lights. This portrait, strong in its grasp of character, was a wedding present from Mr. Sargent to Mrs. Curtis. SIR THOMAS SUTHERLAND, G.C.M.G., M.P. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898. Three-quarters length; standing; full front. Costume of black frock coat, unbuttoned; dark waistcoat and trousers. The right hand holds a piece of paper, and the left hand is half thrust into the trousers pocket. The expres- sion of the eyes and mouth and puckered forehead is serious and somewhat interrogatory. JOHANNES WOLFF Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898. A vigorous sketch portrait of the musician, holding his violin under his arm. Inscribed at top: “A mon ami Johannes Wolff.” Signed, and dated 1897. 183 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT MRS. ANSTRUTHER THOMSON Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1898. The fine quality of tone in the black dress has been noted by one of the art critics of the time. MRS. ERNEST FRANKLIN Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1898. Three-quarters length; seated in an armchair, over the back of which a drapery has been thrown. The white dress is cut low and square at the neck, and the sleeves are half length. At the sitter’s right is a small round table or guéridon on which are two or three books. The attractive expression of the dark eyes is to be remarked. HON. CALVIN S. BRICE Painted in 1898; exhibited at New York portrait exhibition, 1898; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Boston Art Club, 1909. MRS. HAROLD WILSON Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1898. MR. ARTHUR COHEN Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1898. Criticized with much severity by D. S. MacColl. MRS. THURSBY Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1898. Life size; seated; wearing a violet dress, which is in one tone of pure color, but with an extraordinarily vivid play of light and shade. A pale blue cur- tain forms the background. The marked outcome of a distinct artistic individuality. . . . The portrait of Mrs. Thursby is pure impressionism. . . . The direct noting from nature, 4 permanent record of transient effects. ... Mr. J. Sargent is beyond comparison the greatest master of brushwork and of color-material now living. ‘Though the placing of a touch may sometimes seem a little forced, a little too artificially instantaneous, and though the attitude of his figures very often is one of unstable equilibrium, we cannot, on the other 184 GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON Hamilton Collection Reproduced from the photogravure by courtesy of William Heinemann, Ltd., London OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES hand, too highly praise certain “condensed effects,” if I may say so, which are really quite marvellous.—Fernand Khnopff. MISS OCTAVIA HILL Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1899. Seated, with clasped hands, Miss Hill, in a dress of black, with full puffed sleeves and snowy white waist front and neck ruffle of tulle, looks to the left with an expression of placid amusement, as if her own meditations were agreeable company. Half-length. The painter’s magic reveals a face illuminated by an expression of gra- ciousness which only the painter’s art can arrest and fix. . . . This beau- tiful portrait of a woman by Mr. Sargent, so full of dignity, makes one regret very deeply that no portrait of the Queen has come from his brush. The Spectator. Mr. Sargent’s portrait of Miss Octavia Hill, whose genial and clever face is traced en bloc with a hand as firm as it is bold, is to be admired on those grounds, and also for its subject, which must have been delightful to a por- trait painter tired of the characterless expressions of commonplace sitters. The Athenaeum. GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1899; at the Fine Art Society’s exhi- bition of portraits of British commanders, London, 1915; at Venice inter- national exhibition, 1907. Three-quarters length. Figure full front, the head turned to the right, showing the profile. In full uniform, with top coat, which is thrown open, showing a row of medals and decorations on the left breast of the be- frogged tunic. Both hands are resting on the hilt of his sword. A mascu- line and rugged characterization of a thoroughly virile type of character. Every inch a soldier! General Sir Ian Hamilton’s military record in brief: Served in Afghan War, 1878-1880; in Boer War, 1881; Nile Expedition, 1884-1885; Burmese Expedition, 1886—1887,; Chitral relief force, 1895; Tirah cam- paign, 1897-1898; South Africa, 1890-1891 (was at Elandslaagte, the defence of Ladysmith, Diamond Hill, etc.); finally, he commanded the Mediterranean forces in 1915. Author of: “Icarus,” “A Jaunt in a Junk,” “Fighting of the Future,” “A Ballad of Hadji,” “A Staff Officer’s Scrap- Book,” “The Millennium,” and “Gallipoli Diary.” 185 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT The nervous energy of the sitter has seemingly stimulated the nervous energy of the painter. The tall, lithe, sinewy, alert figure of the officer springs tense from the gray background. His nervous hands almost twist on his sword-hilt. The contours of his head and face are eloquent with the quick intelligence and the sensitive vitality beneath. The execution matches and reveals this insight. Every stroke of the brush seems to fall with sim- plicity, surety, breadth and significance. H. T. P. in Boston Transcript. The portrait of General Jan Hamilton . . . is a masterpiece. We were confronted by austerity of truth instead of mere cleverness and brilliancy. He has seen deep into his subject, and absorbed not only its outward appear- ance but its inner life.-—Sadakichi Hartmann. As a rule a red uniform brings disaster upon a picture, but Mr. Sargent has made it a thing of beauty. This result has partly been achieved by reticence. A dark cloak hangs from the shoulders, leaving only a portion of the red showing. There is no subduing of the red itself; it is of the fullest and most splendid hue. But in enjoying the uniform we must not forget the soldier. The characterization of the head and hands is perfect, showing a sensitive organization combined with great vital energy.—The Spectator. HON. THOMAS BRACKETT REED Speaker’s Lobby, House Wing, Capitol, Washington Exhibited at Capitol, Washington, 1899; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1899; at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899. Born, 1839; died, 1902. Member of Congress from Maine, 1877-1899; Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1889-1891, 1895-1899. All Sargent’s portraits of men are revelations of things seen and they are based on the physical presence. The Speaker Reed and the Mr. Chamber- lain are likenesses of men in the flesh, done apparently without a thought of their being statesmen. ‘There is nothing of the official about them, and you would not be able to say that they were political leaders. John C. Van Dyke. MRS. CHARLES HUNTER Exhibited at Sargent loan exhibition, Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; at Royal Academy, London, 1899. Mrs. Hunter is depicted at three-quarters length, with a large black hat 186 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES shading the upper part of her face, a ruffled cape thrown over her shoulders, and a low-cut corsage of scarlet covered with lace. The skirt is black, and the pervading tints in the cape are tan and a thin transparent black. The tan color is repeated in the feathers on the hat. The background is dark. A winning smile plays over the spirited and expressive features. Every line in the portrait is graceful and elegant, and the admirable paint- ing of the beautiful neck is worthy of special remark. . . . The whole forms a distinguished, individual, and strikingly beautiful effect. William A. Coffin. The masterly picture of Mrs. Charles Hunter, with its suggestion of re- finement and fresh air, courage, spirit, enterprise and wit, is subtly English. Alice Meynell. Some afterthought—admiration, perhaps, or the idea of a picture—has clouded his terrible eye in the portrait of Mrs. Charles Hunter. D. S. M. in the Saturday Review. MISS JANE EVANS Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1899. Vivacity in portraiture has probably never been so completely obtained in modern times. . . . The veracity is startling, and the handling brilliant amongst the most dashing bravura passages ever executed; and yet there is a lack of repose . . . which alone makes a picture delightful to live with. Magazine of Art. LADY FAUDEL-PHILLIPS Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1899. A portrait @ apparat. Three-quarters length, full front; seated in an arm- chair, with the right arm resting on a cushion, and a pet dog in her lap. Dark silk dress, décolleté, with short sleeves, and much jewelry. The lady’s white hair is surmounted by an elaborate feather ornament. A curtain in the background. In “‘Lady Faudel-Phillips,” bravura is used with the power of a satire by Pope. Hard, merciless wit, without caricature, is the general impression produced by this picture.—H. S. in The Spectator. MISS HORNER This portrait of a young girl is deftly brushed in with broad, swift, con- fident handling. The method employed might almost be called steno- 187 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT graphic. No colors, except white, pale gray, and flesh tints, with the golden brown of the hair and a mere suggestion of a light rose-pink sash. It ap- pears probable that the head was painted at a single sitting; at any rate, it is a remarkable tour de force, and the color is beautiful. Inscribed. MISS ANSTRUTHER THOMSON Exhibited at Detroit Institute of Art, 1922; at Toledo Museum of Art, 1922; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1923-1924; at Cincinnati, 1924. Canvas: 26 x 32.inches. A portrait of a young girl in white. She appears to be about sixteen years of age. It shows her seated with her back to a window, in the glass of which her head and the upper part of her figure are dimly reflected. The white window casing forms a vertical line extending from the top of her head to the upper edge of the canvas, a somewhat disturbing line. Inscribed at upper right-hand corner, “To Miss Anstruther Thom- son,” and signed. MRS. J. MONTGOMERY SEARS Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1905. Three-quarters length; full front face; seated in an armchair; in a dress of white satin with mull at neck; holding a bouquet of pink and white carnations in left hand. The right elbow rests on the chair back and the hand is held to the sitter’s cheek, two of her fingers being pressed lightly against the cheek. A gold pendant set with ruby and pearl hangs from a slender gold neck chain. At left background in shadow are silver and porcelain objects on a stand. LADY ELCHO, MRS. TENNANT, AND MRS. ADEANE [ “THE THREE GRACES’ | Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1900; at Franco-British exhibi- tion, 1908; at Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1911. The arrangement of the group of these three sisters, daughters of the Hon. Percy Wyndham, is unusual, and not entirely devoid of a hint of artifice. If the purpose was to obtain an effect of casual grouping, as appears prob- able, it can hardly be regarded as altogether successful. The cool color scheme, however, is highly interesting. The dresses, all of white materials, are opposed to sofa cushions of pale blue-greens and warm creamy and 188 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES rosy tones, while among the accessories very agreeable accents are provided by the peonies and other flowers with their dark green leaves, and the bluish-gray wall in shadow, relieved by the gold of picture frames. The lighting, too, is well managed, the light falling diagonally across the room so as to brighten the dull gilt frames of. the pictures on the wall and to illumine the faces as well as to vary the tones of the costumes. The greatest performance, from the point of pure art, is Mr. Sargent’s astonishing group portrait. We are inclined to say that it is the greatest picture that has appeared for many years on the walls of the Royal Academy.—London Times. Mr. Sargent’s portrait of three ladies is one of those truces in the fight where beauty has unquestionably slipped in. . . . This picture has the initial persuading and welcoming appeal to the eye that springs from gen- eral design and harmony.—D. S. M. in Saturday Review. These figures all have the breath of life, for the blood is pulsating to the fingers’ tips; and character goes with the vitality, for with subtle power the faces reveal refinement of nature, high-bred distinction of manner, and individual peculiarities and traits —I. N. F. in New York Tribune. The picture is very large, and the artist has risen to the occasion and avoided minor fascinations and subtleties; choosing rather to be impressive than clever. . . . Never has Mr. Sargent produced a finer harmony of color, and yet there is very little positive color anywhere. Rich though indefinite hues melt into one another. . . . This noble piece of portraiture has ad- mirable qualities of characterization. The figures are instinct with individ- ual life, the faces are animated without spoiling the harmony of the general effect, and the central figure is of great beauty.—H. S. in The Spectator. INTERIOR OF A PALAZZO IN VENICE Burlington House, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1900. Diploma work. A notably interesting and elegant motive, executed with consummate artistic mastery. It represents a sumptuous drawing-room in an old palace—the grand sala of the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice—occupied at the time by an American family, the Curtises of Boston. In the fore- ground, at the right, near a window, an elderly couple, seated. The man, seen in profile, is turning the leaves of a folio volume which he has propped up in a chair in front of him. In the background, at the left, a younger 189 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT couple, near a tea-table; the lady holds a cup of tea in her hand, the tall young gentleman talking to her is half sitting and half leaning on the edge of the table. Details of magnificent chandeliers and lamps, paintings and mirrors in elaborately carved and gilded frames, with fine antique fur- niture. What an honest, infallible grasp of aspect, the confused aspect of the half- seen thing as exactly rendered as that of the fully illuminated! Dark, shapeless smudges reveal themselves at the right distance as cherubs and festoons in the decoration of the ceiling. . . . In what a limpid, brilliant air this picture lives . . . no violence in the pictures round can force the life out of its silvery tones and change them to mere paint. D.S. M. in Saturday Review. Very able, homogeneous, full-toned and solid. . . . It is his diploma work, and was evidently intended as a study for the arrangement of a group of modern portraits at life-size and full-length figures in a seventeenth- century palace in Venice. All the elements of a fine picture are here com- bined with rare art and consummate power.—The Athenaeum. The great rococo room of a Venetian palace occupied by ordinary modern people is painted with a finish and feeling of space that is little less than marvelous. The quiet, unobtrusive way in which the objects emerge from the dimness of the spacious room and take their places with exact rightness is indeed a lesson in painting.—H. S. in The Spectator. EARL OF DALHOUSIE Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1900. Arthur George Maule Ramsay, D.L., Baron Ramsay, Lord Ramsay, four- teenth Earl of Dalhousie, Governor-General of India. Three-quarters length; in a white costume; standing in front of a classic column on the base of which he rests his left arm; the other arm is akimbo; the pose being very easy and natural. The head is knowingly drawn and characterized. The success of the realism is complete; only a real master could have suc- ceeded in making the young face look perfectly right with the sunburn ending in a diagonal line across the forehead.—T he Spectator. The necktie, the sunburn, all that caught the eye first, was a disagreeable challenge, and recognition of the lithe, sharp drawing and nailing char- acterization was an afterthought.—Saturday Review. 190 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1900. Charles Russell, first Lord Russell of Killowen, eminent British jurist; M.P., 1880; Attorney-General, 1886; Lord Chief Justice of England, 1894-1900. Half-length; seated; dressed in the robes of his great office as Lord Chief Justice. The full black draperies, largely and freely felt, set off by the clear white tones of the collar and the square-edged dangling ends of the crisply starched linen cravat. In the head, the massive, solid, virile head of a man of intellect and judicial character, there is a more distinct remi- niscence of Sir Henry Raeburn’s manner than is to be observed usually in Sargent’s portraits of men. LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1900. There were two portraits of Lord Russell in the Royal Academy of 1900, according to Algernon Graves’s ‘“The Royal Academy Exhibitors, 1796- 1904.” SIR DAVID RICHMOND Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1900. Lord Provost of Glasgow, and Lord-Lieutenant of County and City of Glasgow, 1896-1899. Full-length, life-size, erect, in Lord-Lieutenant’s uniform, over which is worn the Lord Provost’s robe, with chain of office around neck. Painted for the Corporation. Signed. Canvas: 8 feet x 4 feet 5 inches. HON. VICTORIA STANLEY Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1900. Full-length; standing; this ingenuous little maiden wears a white dress, red coat, and Scotch cap adorned with two feathers. She carries in both hands a riding-crop. Her long hair falls in curls over her shoulders. The pose is a bit formal for so young a girl, but the equilibrium of the figure is so complete as to give an impression of ease. Incomparable in its astounding vitality and splendid decision. Magazine of Art. 191 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT A rather savage Sargent. Imagine a portrait of Little Red Riding Hood by the Wolf.—D. S. M. in Saturday Review. The color of the portrait is singularly harmonious and rich, and the feeling that the figure has thickness as well as height and breadth perfect. H.S. in The Spectator. MISS M. CAREY THOMAS Bryn Mawr College Exhibited at Paris Universal Exposition of 1900; at loan exhibition of portraits of fair women, Copley Hall, Boston, 1901; at Roman art exhi- bition, 1911; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1907. President of Bryn Mawr College. This is one of Sargent’s soberest works, evidently with deliberate intention kept simple and somewhat severe. ‘The head is most interesting for its reading of character, and is painted with much sympathy. The intelligence and sensibility of the sitter, her look of firmness and energy tempered by gentleness and amiability, are brought out with remarkable success. GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1900. In the fine three-quarters length portrait of General Hamilton (1899) the profile was seen, whereas in this portrait we have a bust-length showing the front face view. The present work is rather more summary in manner, but it has much of the same look of life and alertness. The head is admirably constructed, but the shadow on the right side of the face is a little heavy. The uniform and background are sketchily indicated. A distinguished example of vigor and an entirely individualized style. The Athenaeum. Not only superb characterization, but as well rare beauty of subdued and subtly harmonized color.—Magazine of Art. The characterization of the head, seen full face, is conspicuously fine, and the color beautiful.—H. S. in The Spectator. Excursions round about the officer’s portrait steadily increase one’s admi- ration. . . . See how those patches in which the flesh turns grayer are not separated out as bits of green or yellow, but just vary, in its flow, the pre- vailing tint, as they do in nature, and are subdued by the big changes due to the impact of light.—D. S. M. in Saturday Review. 192 IND ERIORS OR VASPALGAZZOSING VENICE [ Venetian Interior ] Courtesy of the Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, and William Heinemann, Lid., London NS es OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES THE MISSES WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1901; at New Salon, Paris, 1902, under the title of “Portrait de deux sceurs.” The two sisters are shown at nearly full length, standing side by side in a full, clear light, in a richly furnished interior. Fhe elder and taller one, in white silk, has her arm about the waist of the younger and shorter one, who is dressed in a dark red velvet. In the background, a very handsome, large porcelain jar, several oil paintings on the wall, etc. The open fan held by one of the young ladies is a marvel of foreshortening. The vitality of the two sisters is extraordinary, and the vivid revelation of racial traits in their features is not less so. A marvellous tour de force of execution. The artist seems to have felt that it was expected of him that he should astonish, and he has done so. The Spectator. This is in its way a masterpiece. The poses are full of spontaneity and verve, and the contrast between the leaning figure of the younger girl and the almost exaggerated robustness of her sister is entirely felicitous. The Athenaeum. I should say that rarely in the history of painting have its engines discharged a portrait so emphatically, so undistractedly contrived. The woman is there, with a vitality hardly matched since Rubens, the race, the social type, the person.—D. S. M. in Saturday Review. The two daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Wertheimer shown in this remarkable picture are Ena and Betty. The former became Mrs. Robert M. Mathias, and the latter Mrs. Euston A. Salaman. Separate likenesses of both were also painted by Sargent. Canvas: 73 x 51 inches. MME. PAUL ESCUDIER Charles Deering collection Exhibited at Paris Salon, tion, Pittsburgh, 1923. Full-length. Mme. Escudier is depicted standing near a window through which a strong light falls on the left side of her face and figure. She wears a dark silk dress with V-shaped corsage, half-length sleeves, and train. Her hands are clasped together, and her head is slightly tilted to one side. ; at Carnegie Institute international exhibi- One cannot look at it without thinking of Alfred Stevens, yet even the great Belgian could hardly excel it in fluency —Art and Archaeology. 193 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT HON. MRS. CHARLES RUSSELL Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1901. Half-length. The lady, in pale rose color and white, is standing, with her face in shadow, and leaning against a carved cabinet on which she has placed her elbows, close to a beautifully painted silver lamp. In this pose there is a felicitous fluency. Much character is expressed in the nervous face, the long, slim neck, and the sensitive hands. Eyes and mouth are rather sad. The subtle way in which the hair merges into the background is a fine touch. The canvas has pictorial unity and reserve. Though low in tone, and in parts not in the painter’s happiest color, it speaks to us in a truer note. . . . What he tells us of this pathetic face is very interesting and very sad.— Magazine of Art. SIR CHARLES TENNANT, OF THE GLEN, BART. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1go1. The sitter was one of the most noted Scots of the nineteenth century, a pioneer and leader of industry, an active politician, and a great figure in social life. Among his numerous children were Edward Tennant, M.P. for Salisbury; Harold John Tennant, M.P. for Berwickshire; Lady Rib- blesdale, Mrs. Margot Asquith, and the late Mrs. Alfred Lyttleton. The mansion of The Glen, in Peebleshire, was for two generations the home of this remarkable family of singularly varied interests and gifts; and as the meeting place of men and women distinguished in all walks of life— social, political, literary, and artistic—was one of the most famous country houses in Great Britain. MRS. GARRETT ANDERSON, M.D. Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1901. A portrait which holds a high place for the almost startling vividness of the likeness. Full of character and spirited expression. The head is modelled with consummate skill; the bright eyes are noticeable; the hands finely characterized. The black silk gown is also a superbly painted bit. The furioso method and temperament of the painter has shown the lady violently aggressive and totally unsympathetic, which we well know must belie the charm of the sitter —Magazine of Art. 194 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES C. S. LOCH, ESQ. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1901. Half-length. Low in tone. The arms are folded. There are no sharp con- trasts. The personality of the sitter is revealed with convincing fidelity and supreme vitality. MRS. CAZALET AND CHILDREN Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1go1. A large and sumptuous picture, faintly suggestive of Sir Thomas Law- rence, but full of original invention. The lady is beautiful, and she is beautifully rendered. Among the accessories are a chair upholstered in velvet and a great red curtain in the background, which is novel in ar- rangement. It is very wonderful, and perhaps no one else could have done it, but at the same time it leaves one cold.—T he Spectator. The children, excellently as they are painted, are not the most successful of Mr. Sargent’s brilliant creations.— Magazine of Art. SIR GEORGE SITWELL, LADY IDA SITWELL, AND FAMILY Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1gor. A group of standing figures, painted in the sharp perspective of objects seen near at hand. ‘The head of Sir George Sitwell is an especially fine piece of work. In the background are a cabinet and some tapestry. Sir George is in hunting costume; his wife is wearing an evening gown; the two children are playing on the floor. The luxuriously appointed room with its tapestries and ornaments is depicted in a most interesting manner. INGRAM BYWATER, ESQ. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1901. The sitter is Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. DUKE OF PORTLAND Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1901. Full-length. In walking costume of short coat, breeches and leggings. Carrying a walking stick and cap under his right arm. ‘Two collie dogs, one lying down at left, the other standing up at right of his master, who holds 195 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT his muzzle in his left hand, while the dog looks up with the expression that seems to say, “I am all ready; come along; let’s go.” William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, K.G., P.C., G.C.V.O., D.L., J.P., Earl of Portland, Viscount Woodstock, Baron of Cirencester, Marquis of Titchfield, Baron Bolsever. Master of the Horse; Lord-Lieutenant of Caithness; Lord-Lieutenant of Nottingham; Lieuten- ant in Coldstream Guards; Hon. Colonel Fourth Battalion Sherwood For- esters; family trustee of British Museum; Provincial Master Notts. Free- masons, etc. Residences: Welbeck Abbey, Worksop; Fullarton House, Ayrshire; Castle Cessnock, Galston, Ayrshire; Langwell, Berriedale, Caithness-shire. Characteristic as to pose, arrangement and execution; all proclaim the work of a master.— Magazine of Art. We shall gain nothing of more importance than the most superficial observer would discover on a formal introduction to his lordship—less, indeed, for all the while we have been deafened by the fizz and crackle of Mr. Sargent’s brushwork.—T he Athenaeum. DUCHESS OF PORTLAND Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902. This is a pendant to the portrait of the Duke of Portland, both canvases being unusually high in comparison with their width. Full-length; stand- ing; full front. In evening dress of white satin, cut low at neck, with a red cloak, thrown open, and wide, flaring Elizabethan collar of wonderful old lace; ropes of pearls at waist line and bust. The color scheme is par- ticularly rich; the cérise red of the cloak coming into contrast with the greenish-white of the fluted Ionic pair of marble columns supporting one end of the lofty sculptured mantelpiece in the background. The duchess is a tall and slender young woman, with curly dark hair and steady dark eyes. The head and hands are very handsomely treated, with suavity and clear- ness of drawing. The pose is graceful as well as dignified. VISCOUNTESS ACHESON Exhibited at International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1918. 196 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES THE MISSES HUNTER Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hunter, Darlington, Hants Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902; at New Salon, Paris, 1903; at Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904; at Pennsylvania Acad- emy, 1904; at Society of American Artists, New York, 1904. A large group portrait of three sisters. Disregarding one of the old tradi- tions of the portraitist, that the figures in a group should face towards each other with the heads near together, the painter has here placed his sitters on a circular divan with their backs turned towards each other and facing towards the sides of the frame. In this as in other groups Sargent has at- tempted to avoid the conventional and formal design, and to give the impression of a casual and informal composition. In ashadowy interior. One of the ladies wears a gown of creamy white, and the other two are in black silk, relieved by slight touches of white. A small dog lies at the feet of one of the sitters. The arrangement of the “Misses Hunter” is an ingenious but rather luck- less idea. Those seats that turn three ways are uncomfortable, over- ingenious things in themselves.—Saturday Review. There is the sense of artifice and effort, of lines teased into relations to one another which, when he is himself, Mr. Sargent never discloses. ‘The trouble, I take it, is that he is groping through the intricacies of a formula, a thing foreign to his genius, and, what is more, foreign to his time. Royal Cortissoz. The “Misses Hunter” is one of those presentations in which Mr. Sargent utilizes the resources of furniture to tie together, as it were, the figures of his canvas into a compact composition, but with such judgment that the personages appear to have happened quite naturally or quite by chance in their respective places in the scene; for scene it sometimes is when three sisters on this cushioned circular seat sit talking over the little nothings or somethings of the season.—F rank Fowler. Taken as a whole, the picture is a noble example of matured knowledge and of skill and feeling balanced. It surely will hold its own among the artist’s masterpieces, for it combines the intimate charm of Reynolds’s “Three Ladies Waldegrave,” with a freer scope of individual vision and technique.—Charles H. Caffin. 197 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT THE YOUNGER CHILDREN OF ASHER WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1902. A group of three figures, two girls and a boy, with a trio of pet poodle dogs. Composition of felicitous informality. The elder girl is sitting on a couch, with one of the dogs asleep in her lap. The younger girl, seated a little lower, holds another small dog in both of her hands as he sits up nicely for his likeness. The boy, in an Eton jacket, is sitting on the floor; and the third dog, at the left of the group, lying on the floor, is a remark- able model of canine absurdity. The terrestrial globe in the background, at the left, perhaps indicates that the scene is in the schoolroom of the Wertheimer villa. The moral atmosphere of an opulent and exotic society has been seized and put before us.— The Spectator. The Wertheimer children in their schoolroom, where the freedom from study hours has permitted the admission of household pets. The natural- ness of such a moment with its privileges, seems most truthful and un- studied, and in its domestic theme is of the tradition of Velasquez’s “Las Meninas.”—F rank Fowler. ; These three younger children of Mr. and Mrs. Wertheimer are Essie, Ruby, and Ferdinand. Essie became Mrs. E. H. Wilding. Canvas: 62 x 75 inches. ALFRED WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902. Three-quarters length; facing three-quarters to the left. A young man of twenty-five, wearing a dark coat and buff waistcoat. He stands with his left hand resting on a heap of books which lie on a table; in his right hand is a newspaper. On the wall are two or three retorts, indicating the nature of his studies. ‘The anatomy of the head is indicated with telling accuracy of modelling. The subject of this very fine likeness died in South Africa the same year that the portrait was painted. I know of no portrait in ancient or modern art with which to compare this superb picture, unless it be the lovely head which used to be called Menephtah, in the Boulaq Museum at Cairo—Robert Ross. The portrait of Alfred Wertheimer shows a young man in the fullness of 198 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES a rich and ripe vitality, so lighted as to offer the best relief to the plastic planes of this broadly modelled and virile head.—F rank Fowler. Canvas: 63 x 38% inches. EDWARD WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London This portrait of the late Edward Wertheimer was sketched in Paris, in 1902, the year of his untimely death. Canvas: 63 x 38 “inches. BETTY WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London Oval. Three-quarters length; seated; the face turned to her left. A beau- tiful face, with full lips, long, straight nose, keen dark eyes, and deli- cately marked, symmetrical eyebrows, all framed by a wondrous mass of thick black hair. The head is sharply relieved against the sky and is set between the plinth of a stone column at the right and a huge marble urn at the left, on a massive balustrade, at the Villa Wertheimer. The dress is a marvel of elegance, low-necked, with elbow-length puffed sleeves, and a very full skirt. The background of sky and architecture is decoratively treated. Graceful and charming in features, figure, expression and pose, this young woman’s portrait recalls the style of Sir Thomas Lawrence, but it is distinctly superior to the work of that painter in the suggestion of intense vitality. An exquisite painting with something of Lawrence in its conception and gaiety of color.—Robert Ross. Canvas: 48 x 37 inches. ALNA WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London This portrait, one of the celebrated series of Wertheimer family portraits, is at three-quarters length; seated; the face full front; the lips parted in a half-smile; a happy light in the handsome eyes. The young lady is in Persian costume, and is holding a lute. The gorgeous Oriental garb, a notable part of which is the immense plumed headdress with its ropes of pearls, does not seem misplaced on this spirited and vivid creature. The work is superlative in its splendor of color and of vitality. She reigns alone, a youthful sovereign among subjects.—Robert Ross. Canvas: 51 x 3714 inches. 199 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT HYLDA WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London One of the series of Wertheimer family portraits. Hylda Wertheimer be- came Mrs. H. Wilson Young. Canvas: 82x55 inches. CONWAY, ALNA AND HYLDA WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London One of the series of Wertheimer family portraits. Canvas: 73x 514 inches. LORD RIBBLESDALE Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902; at Venice international ex- hibition, 1907. Thomas Lister, P.C., J.P., fourth Baron. Sub-Lieutenant 64th Regiment; Lieutenant Rifle Brigade; Major; Lord-in-Waiting; Master of Buck- hounds, etc. Residence: Gisburne Park, near Clitheroe. His first wife was a daughter of Sir Charles Tennant; and his second wife was a daughter of Mr. Willing of Philadelphia and the widow of John Jacob Astor. Lord Ribblesdale is the author of ‘“The Queen’s Hounds and Stag-Hunt- ing Recollections.” He is represented at full length, in hunting costume, holding a whip in one hand. The portrait is generally considered one of Sargent’s most notable likenesses of men, and when shown at Venice in 1907 it was praised by King Victor Emmanuel, who called it a masterpiece. One hardly knows whether face or figure is more expressive of the poise of life—the unstable equilibrium by which a man is thus admirably erect, so that nothing stable and secure seems so upright, and nothing in flight more full of life—Alice Meynell. Mr. Sargent’s most masterly portrait of the year is Lord Ribblesdale in long riding coat and top hat, standing against a fluted marble pilaster. As a pic- torial presence, firmly and sympathetically knit, complete and unmannered, he dominates the central gallery— The Art Journal. MRS. WILLIAM C. ENDICOTT Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902; at Boston Art Museum, 1903, 1915 and 1916; at loan exhibition of portraits, Copley Hall, 200 : ; e. & 3 = $ THE TWO ELDER DAUGHTERS OF ASHER WER THEMIMER, Es: Courtesy of the National Gallery, London, and William Heinemann, Ltd., London . OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES Boston, 1914; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Nearly full-length; seated; dark costume set off by white lace at throat and wrists. Dull crimson curtain in background. This presentment of a very interesting personality, of great distinction and nobility of mien, interesting also as a type, is quite on a par with Van Dyck. Very much depends on whether Sargent finds himself in a congenial rapport with his sitter, as is well known; and here he was evidently in com- plete sympathy with his subject. It may be doubted whether he has ever painted a better head than that of Mrs. Endicott. The color scheme is sober—a black dress, with white lace collar, and a dull crimson curtain for background. There is nothing showy or “clever,” nothing for effect, but everything is just and sound and genuine. In the painting of the lace, for instance, there is that golden mean of knowing synthesis, of suggestive breadth of workmanship, which gives the object its due importance and no more and no less. As a study of individual character and a masterly ren- dering of a fine type, it is unsurpassable. Sargent has probably painted more brilliant things, more striking things, but he has never made a more sterling portrait.—Boston Transcript. WILLIAM C. ENDICOTT, JR. Exhibited at twenty-second exhibition of paintings by contemporary Ameri- can artists, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1908-1909; at Boston Art Museum, 1915 and 1916. MRS. WILLIAM C. ENDICOTT, JR. Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903, 1904, 1915, 1916; at second exhibition of paintings by contemporary American artists, Corcoran Gal- lery, Washington, 1908-1909. ON HIS HOLIDAYS, NORWAY McCulloch collection [SALMON FISHING IN NORWAY] Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1902; at fifty-seventh exhibition Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 1918. A picture of a young boy lying on the brink of a swift mountain stream whose blue-green waters swirl and eddy among gray rocks. The boy is resting, with some caught salmon and tackle beside him on the ground, making the central feature of a well-painted piece of landscape. 201 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT This picture has a special fascination as a record of silvery daylight. It is magnificently broad and simple in handling, and is amazingly true in its rendering of open-air tones.—Magazine of Art. The freedom of life out of doors and the joy of existence by those sound- ing waters are fixed and made permanent. . . . The figure in this picture is both beautiful in itself and in perfect accord with its surroundings. The Spectator. THE LADIES ALEXANDRA, MARY AND THEO ACHESON Collection of Duke of Devonshire Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902; at Franco-British exhibition, London, 1908. Another portrait group of three sisters, the daughters of Lord Gosford. This is in an open-air setting and is quite in the taste of the British eighteenth-century school. The spirited and pretty young ladies, all in white muslin summer costume, are grouped round a huge, dull-gilt jar in which is an orange tree heavily laden with fruit and leaves. ‘The lady to the left stands with both arms raised above her head, reaching up to pluck the fruit. The second sister, who has blue gauze round her neck, with a straying sash of light blue, is at the base of the jar, in a naive, half-shrinking mo- mentary attitude, as if about to rise from a sitting position. She is gathering up her semi-transparent muslin overskirt with both hands to serve as a fruit basket, and oranges gleam through the thin material. ‘The third figure, standing at the right, and looking away, wears a large black-plumed hat and a black and white sash. All of the sitters look as if they were posing for. a portrait; but the central figure is the most natural and ingenuous of the trio. There is a basket partly full of oranges in the foreground. In the background are sky, foliage, and the big jar. The design is neither very good nor very bad. It is one of a number of examples of Sargent’s endeavor to get away from the conventional arrangement of groups, an endeavor in which he was not always wholly successful. A not very exact comparison has been instituted between this picture and the Three Irish Graces of the National Gallery, yet, if markedly dissimilar from that particular Sir Joshua, the Acheson group is unmistakably an essay in the grand style. . . . The charge of artificiality is surely not jus- tified. Mr. Sargent, it is true, has chosen to represent a moment in the life of these sisters of an essentially transient kind. There is little or no sug- 202 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES gestion of past or coming experiences. A change of sky, and the thing vanishes. But it is not on that account less true—in design, in poise, in glad color—to the sentiment of the moment; the grace of the picture belongs to our own day.—The Art Journal. In the grand style, finely grouped in the open air, with a great vase in the middle holding an orange tree, from which one of the ladies gathers the fruit and another holds some covered up but not concealed in the lap of her muslin dress; and all are dressed in white, graceful, very tall, and smiling, elegant of figure and pretty of feature—the whole as refined in beauty as in color—a fine design nobly and learnedly carried out— Magazine of Art. MRS. LEOPOLD HIRSCH Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902. Three-quarters length. A distinctly Jewish type. Elaborate pink and silver gown of old Spanish brocade, with a deep bertha of lace falling from the shoulders to the waist. The hands are lightly clasped together. LADY MEYSEY THOMPSON Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1902. In movement, in tone, and in color, it is a boisterous and noisy perform- ance.— The Athenaeum. GEORGE McCULLOCH A SALMON THE LATE MRS. GOETZ Painted in 1902. WILLIAM M. CHASE Metropolitan Museum, New York Exhibited at Copley Hall, Boston, 1902; at Society of American Artists, New York, 1903; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903; at Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904. Standing in a characteristic pose, the figure, slightly relieved against a dark gray background, faces the spectator. In his left hand are a cluster of paint- brushes, a mahlstick, and a large palette smudged with paints. In the ex- tended right hand he holds a brush. The eyes look confidently out of the 203 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT picture from behind eyeglasses from which depends a broad black ribbon. Gift of his pupils, 1905. Signed. Canvas: 62 x 41 inches. INNOCENTS ABROAD Exhibited at Philadelphia, 1902. Sea beach, with the figures of four small boys, entirely nude. Two of them are lying on the sand at the right of the foreground; one, who wears a pair of water-wings, stands with his back towards the observer; and the fourth, a tiny youngster, is walking towards the spectator. The ocean in the back- ground, with a sloop near the horizon. HON. JOHN HAY Clarence L. Hay collection Exhibited at Copley Hall, Boston, 1903; at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1907 and 1916. American author, journalist, and diplomatist. He was assistant private secretary to President Lincoln, 1861-1865; first secretary of legation at Paris, 1865-1867; chargé d’affaires at Vienna, 1867-1868; secretary of legation at Madrid, 1868-1870; assistant secretary of State, 1879-1881; ambassador to Great Britain, 1897-1898; secretary of State, 1898-1905. He was the author of ‘“‘Pike County Ballads” and “Castilian Days,” also, in collaboration with J. G. Nicolay, of the “Life of Lincoln.” Bust length; full front. Very serious in expression; the gaze steady and concentrated; the right arm is thrown over the chair arm, the hand hanging idle. “John Hay,” rich in the Americanism of his time, a public man of ideals and strong opinions, and a humor that hardly would be recognized as such to-day; a portrait that makes one think of an essay by Lowell. New York Times. The attributes of a gentleman, writer, traveler, lover of art, thinker, leader and diplomat—not each in turn, but all together, are shown in the Hay portrait.—Rose V. S. Berry. JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. Harvard Club, New York Exhibited at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903. The subject is out of doors, standing by some trees, and is dressed in gray, holding a topcoat over his arm. A tour de force of remarkable breadth and 204 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES certainty, in which everything is indicated in thé most simple manner and with masterly sweeps of the brush. Three-quarters length. MISS CARTER J.R. Carter collection Half-length portrait of a young lady in summer dress, shown in a conven- tional landscape setting. Her neck and shoulders, draped with voluminous tulle; the head relieved against a mass of dark foliage which fills the upper part of the canvas. Illustrated in Century Magazine, June, 1910. In 1910 Miss Carter was married to Lord Acheson, the son of Lord and Lady Gosford. CHARLES M. LOEFFLER, ESQ. Fenway Court, Boston Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903. Boston musician, violinist, composer. Born in Alsace, 1861, came to Amer- ica in 1881. Among his compositions are “Les Veillées de ]’Ukraine,” “Fantastic Concerto,” “Divertimento in A minor,” “Symphonic Poem,” “The Death of Tintagiles,” ‘“Divertissement Espagnole,” “La Bonne Chanson,” “La Villanelle du Diable,” “Deux Rapsodies,” “By the Waters of Babylon,” “For One who Fell in Battle,” “A Pagan Poem,” “Hora Mystica,” also many songs. JAMES WILLIAM WHITE, M.D University of Pennsylvania Exhibited at Pennsylvania Academy, 1910. Eminent Philadelphia surgeon; professor of surgery in University of Pennsylvania. Author of “Human Anatomy,” “American Textbook of Surgery,” etc. He is depicted in his scholastic gown. MRS. WILLIAM HARTLEY CARNEGIE Mrs. W.C. Endicott collection Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1903; at Boston Art Museum, 1916; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Three-quarters length; standing; in a white silk dress, with long white gloves; holding a fan. The lips are slightly parted; the gaze open, direct, candid. The arrangement of the abundant dark hair, crowned by a feather ornament, is picturesque and becoming. 205 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Mrs. Carnegie is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William C. Endicott; she became the wife of the late Hon. Joseph Chamberlain; and married, en secondes noces, Mr. Carnegie. Let us admit that neither Mr. Sargent nor any other living man has ever done anything more brilliant or achieved a greater technical triumph than the painting of the dress in this picture. It is as though a few strokes had done it, but what strokes! instinct with what power, what light, what color!—London Times. EDWARD ROBINSON, LL.D., LITT.D. Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Director of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; eminent as classical archaeologist; formerly curator of classical antiquities in Boston Art Mu- seum, and director; lecturer on classical archaeology at Harvard Uni- versity, etc. The likeness is very strong. Unusual pose, one result of which is to bring the head very near the top of the canvas. Figure standing, back to a table, on which the left hand is placed, and on which two antique Greek bronzes are seen. Background of books. A superb likeness, a museum piece, and astutely unrelated to any special environment, prepared to take its place with Venetian Sixteenth or Dutch Seventeenth or the Greek or Egyptian, a portrait from which predilection is erased, in which universal culture is underlined.—New York Times. MAJOR HENRY LEE HIGGINSON Harvard Union Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Banker, soldier, public-spirited citizen of Boston, benefactor of Harvard, and “angel” of Boston Symphony Orchestra for many years. Full-length; seated; a pendant to the portrait of President Emeritus Eliot in the living room of the Harvard Union. By general consent held to be one of Sargent’s most sympathetic, intimate and felicitous portraits of men. The pose, showing the figure in a relaxed attitude, with the left arm thrown over the back of the chair, and with a black gown lying across the knees, though informal, is not without dignity. The work happily brings out the fine points of Major Higginson’s character. 206 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES The rich, dark background, where a table and an adjoining room may or may not be realized, frames a vital figure in a brown suit, seated carelessly with one arm around the back of his chair, and the whole bodily gesture of relaxedness well indicated under the folds of the heavy dressing gown thrown negligently across his knee like a rug. Everything on the large canvas seems to lead back and focus on the half-tilted face, with its kindly, quizzical gaze and its fine sensitiveness. Margaret Breuning in New York Evening Post. In this portrait of Major Higginson he has, through sympathy and consum- mate art, produced a work of superb quality and profound significance, a work which through its very vitality and human appeal dominates without aid of so-called pictorial accessories. The pose is essentially easy. There is reserve in the facial expression, but the eyes meet those of the observer with penetrating directness, the eyes of the keen observer of life, of an alert idealist —Leila Mechlin. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY = John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis Exhibited at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903; at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904; at biennial exhibition, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1908-1909; at Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1909; at Toledo Art Museum, 1912. The beloved Hoosier Poet. His works include ‘“The Old Swimmin’ Hole,” “The Boss Girl,” “Afterwhiles,” “Pipes o”? Pan at Zekesbury,” “Rhymes of Childhood,” “Home Folks,” ““An Old Sweetheart of Mine,” “Raggedy Man,” “Old Schoolday Romances,” ‘Home Again with Me,” and a score of other volumes, much of his verse being in the Middle Western or Hoosier dialect. Half-length. The Hoosier Poet, whose personality has been realized in this likeness with marked understanding, is represented as sitting, three-quarters front, looking downward through his eyeglasses; his left arm resting on the arm of the chair, the hand hanging with the fingers bent in a natural and characteristic movement, while the right hand, somewhat lower, holds a roll of manuscript. ALEXANDER J. CASSATT Pennsylvania Railroad Company Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903. Late President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. 207 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Just as Rembrandt, in his “Syndics,” in Amsterdam, was man enough to feel and express . . . commercial astuteness, business solidity, and poise, and the sense of responsibility in trade, so has Sargent here nobly and ap- preciatively read into a great page of art the same admirable and impressive traits of the great captains of industry.—Boston Transcript. PETER A. B. WIDENER Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903. Capitalist, interested largely in street railways and many other important corporations; late city treasurer of Philadelphia; founder of the famous gallery of paintings in his palatial house at Elkins Park, Penn. Three-quarters length. Mr. Widener, whose expression is genial, looks like a man of modest and genuine character. He is represented standing near a door and in front of one of his favorite paintings in the main picture gallery of his mansion. MRS. JOSEPH E. WIDENER Exhibited at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903; at Boston Art Museum, 1903. Three-quarters length; seated; full front; wearing a white evening dress, sleeveless and low neck, with chiffon about the arms and scarf of the same material in lap; pearl ornaments; tapestry background. Extremely lively and vivacious in expression and attitude. This beautiful canvas is the last word in brilliancy and spontaneity. It is as fresh as the dawn and fairly pulsating with life. The dainty and delicate loveliness of the youthful sitter’s features and complexion are rendered with perfection, and the sprightly charm of her personality is conveyed with enchanting immediacy. Daughter-in-law of the late Peter A. B. Widener. MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD, U.S.A. Exhibited at loan exhibition of twenty portraits by Sargent in Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903; at Royal Academy, London, 1904; at Roman Art Exposition of 1911; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Corcoran Gallery, Washington, 1916—— 1917. Major-General, U.S.A.; Commander of Rough Riders, 1898; Military Governor of Cuba, 1899-1902; Governor-General of the Philippine Islands since 1921; Congressional Medal of Honor; M.D. and LL.D, 208 THE YOUNGER CHILDREN OF ASHER WERTHEIMER, ESQ. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London, and William Heinemann, Ltd., London OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES Harvard; with honorary degrees from twelve other universities and colleges. Half-length; in uniform. The head, turned slightly to the left, is modelled firmly, the shapes of the jaw, cheek bone, brow, temple, nose, etc., together with the calm and steady glance of the eyes, combining to give a general impression of marked poise, resolution, and force of character. A triumph of solid painting. There is nothing to attract attention by its cleverness in the portrait; it tells by the sheer force of the modelling. The Spectator. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT White House, Washington Three-quarters length; standing; full front; with right hand on the knob of a newel post, and his left arm akimbo, hand on hip. Dark frock coat and gray trousers. When Mr. Sargent paints an American—the portrait of Mr. Roosevelt, for example—the eye has the look of America, the national habit is in the figure and head.—Alice Meynell. Sense of power cunningly realized by such devices as the outstretched hand, muscular and exaggerated, that grasps the support as if it were the great globe itself that he held in his iron grasp.—London Chronicle. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT James Parmelee collection EARL OF CROMER Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1903. Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer, noted financier and diplomatist. He was appointed one of the comptrollers-general representing England and France in Egypt, 1879, became finance minister of India, 1880, and min- ister at Cairo in, 1883. He was created Baron in 1892, Viscount in 1899, and Earl in 1901. ‘The portrait shows him sitting in his library, in a light gray suit, and is a fine likeness, but, according to the judgment of the majority of the critics, it lacks the genius to explain the secret of the qualities of mind and character that enabled this square-built Englishman to become the greatest ruler that Egypt has ever had since the days of the Pharaohs. The picture is a good and sound piece of work, without affectation, but also without imagination. There is little in this gentleman sitting by his 209 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT writing table which suggests the successor of Pharaoh; and here the artist was at fault, for he might have suggested this with strict adherence to the visible characteristics of his subject. The man who has given justice, peace, law, security, to the Land of the River, and that not by force, but by force of character, does not speak from the canvas as he ought. H. S. in The Spectator. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER [MRs,. FISKE WARREN AND HER DAUGHTER RACHEL | Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Roman Art Exposition of 1911; at Worcester Art Museum, 1912; at Corcoran Gallery, Washing- ton, 1912-1913; at seventeenth international exhibition Carnegie Insti- tute, Pittsburgh, 1913; at loan exhibition of portraits, Copley Hall, Bos- ton, 1914; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924; at Boston Women’s City Club, 1924. Painted in the Gothic Room, Fenway Court, Boston, 1903. This is one of the painter’s most felicitous and sympathetic portrait groups. It gives expres- sion to the ties of kinship between two lives, the things that lie deeper than external resemblance but are often suggested by it. As respects the chief figure the picture recalls in a measure the flower-like radiant beauty of young motherhood that was so well embodied in the Mrs. Carl Meyer of | 1897; while the charm of sweet, unsullied, wistful maidenhood in the face and figure of the daughter is unexcelled in any of Sargent’s works. The color is rich, delicate, and harmonious, though without great depth. Mrs. Warren wears a low-necked white satin gown in which there are faint tinges of rose-pink; a feather boa has slipped from her shoulders to her elbow and hangs over the edge of her chair. The daughter’s dress is of a delicate shade of rose-pink. Sargent’s success in using this difficult color is equal to that of Alfred Stevens. One of Sargent’s charming paintings, one in which he more than ordinarily permits himself to let the element of sentiment enter into the conception. . . . There is something unspeakably lovely about the movement of the daughter’s figure and the expression of her face.—Boston Transcript. MRS. J. WILLIAM WHITE Exhibited at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903; at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915; at Art Club of Phil- adelphia, 1919. 210 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES Half-length; full front; painted in an afternoon; the head is finished, the rest rather roughly blocked in. In this portrait Sargent succeeded in obtaining a splendid likeness and fine vivacity. By leaving the picture in its sketchy state he has retained a fresh- ness and a verve beyond any finished work he might have done. Rose V. 5S. Berry. S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D. Mutual Assurance Company, Philadelphia Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903; at Pennsylvania Academy, 1903. Eminent neurologist and author. The long list of his published books in- cludes scientific works, more especially treatises on nervous diseases and the rest treatment, as well as some twenty novels and biographies. Among his romances are “Hugh Wynne,” “In War Time,” “The Wager,” “The Mind Reader,” “The Red City,” ‘Constance Trescot,” ‘Comedy of Conscience.” Half-length; seated; wearing his academic gown, and holding a book in his left hand, with elbow resting on a table. The dreamy, speculative ex- pression in the eyes is to be noted. Not only is the brushwork more than usually fraught with inspired facility, but the likeness is admirable, and has the further value of being a serious study of psychological expression. This, indeed, is likely to remain one of the most significant of Sargent’s portraits, a remarkable presentation of a very remarkable man.—IJnternational Studio. MRS. CHARLES P. CURTIS, JR. Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903. A member of the family represented in the diploma work, “A Venetian Interior,” now in Burlington House. G. McCORQUODALE, ESQ. Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1903. An ably painted portrait of a fair-haired man in a black velvet coat. It presents in a striking manner the modern combination of the keen busi- ness man with the still keener sportsman. MRS. GARDINER G. HAMMOND Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903. 211 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT JUDGE W. C. LORING ib Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1903. MRS. JULIUS WERNHER Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1903. She is now Lady Ludlow. MRS. PHILIP AGNEW Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1903. LADY EVELYN CAVENDISH Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1903. She is now the Duchess of Devonshire. HIS STUDIO Boston Art Museum Exhibited at New English Art Club, London, 1904. Study of an interior with one figure. A small room, the right half of which is filled with an unmade bed; on the foot of the bed hang a white shirt and a blue garment; at the left sits a man in profile, with a palette and brushes in his left hand; he has a large beard and wears gray-brown clothes. Against the end wall leans a large painting, supported on the bed and the washstand; on this stand are a bowl and pitcher; two sketches stand on the floor, another is lying on the bed, and a Panama hat has been thrown on the bed; the walls of the room are yellowish-brown. Painted in 1903. Signed in the upper right corner. Canvas: 217% x 28% inches. Purchased, Charles Henry Hayden Fund, 1905. MRS. ASHER WERTHEIMER Tate Gallery, London Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1904; at the Franco-British Expo- sition, London, 1908. Mrs. Wertheimer is shown seated in an armchair; facing full front; nearly full-length; holding a fan in her right hand; her dress is of black silk; and she is wearing much jewelry, including a triple string of pearls around her neck and an aigrette of diamonds in her hair. On a table at the left are some curios and objets dart. The beauty of the work is of so subtle a kind that it can hardly be put into 212 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES words; the artist will revel in it as a technical achievement, the student of humanity will be moved by it for quite other reasons. Mr. Sargent has never stood as high or so legitimately compelled admiration as here. Sir Claude Phillips. A searching study of character, in an admirably sober and discreet arrange- ment. The prevailing hue’is black, but it is so well modified that it is far from giving an impression of monotony or dullness. A picture which ‘reaches a height of accomplishment that even he has seldom before attained.—T he Spectator. SIR THOMAS LANE DEVITT Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1904. ‘Three-quarters length; in a frock coat; standing by a table on which is a finely wrought model of a historic full-rigged ship. First Baronet. Senior partner in the firm of Devitt & Moore; chairman of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping; president Equitable Life Assurance Society ; master of the Skinners Company; president of the United Kingdom Chamber of Shipping; chairman General Ship-Owners’ Society; president Institute of Marine Engineers; etc. CHARLES STEWART, MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1904. As its full title (“Charles Stewart, Sixth Marquess of Londonderry, K.G., Carrying the Great Sword of State at the Coronation, August, 1902, and Mr. W. C. Beaumont, his page on that occasion”), would imply, this is a parade portrait, and, according to one of the critics of the day, the artist was as much puzzled about what to do with the sword of state as the Marquess himself. The best part of the picture is the page, Mr. Beaumont, who is painted with artistic sympathy and charm. DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1904; at New Salon, Paris, 1905; at the Fair Women exhibition, New Gallery, London, 1909; at Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Grafton Galleries, London, 1915. Full-length; standing. In this canvas the sitter, who is wearing a cold green gown, is projected against a mysterious warm-toned woodland background. Din CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT COUNTESS OF LATHOM Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1904. This is an unusual and pleasing harmony of dull blue and dull plum color. The composition is easy and natural. A very good picture, but not, we take it, a very good portrait; that is to say, the rendering of character is not sufficiently intense to dominate the parade of the setting —The Athenaeum. MRS. HUGH SMITH Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1904. The dexterity of the painting is as great as ever, but the abstraction of the forms and tones seems too easily done.-—T he Spectator. MRS. ALLHUSEN Exhibited at National Portrait Society, London, 1919. SIR HENRY LUCY Exhibited at New Gallery, London, 1904. One of the editors of Punch, known under the pseudonym of Toby, M.P., who died in 1924, leaving an estate of £250,000. In memory of his long connection with Punch, his portrait by Sargent was offered to the proprie- tors of that periodical, to be hung on the walls of the Punch dining room for ten years, after which it was to be offered to the directors of the National Portrait Gallery. The painter . . . seems to have known so exactly what he intended to do that there is none of the stimulating effect of discovery. No hidden treasure is brought to light; all was known from the beginning.—T he Spectator. MRS. JOHN C. TOMLINSON Exhibited at Society of American Artists, New York, 1904. Three-quarters length; standing; full front. Her right elbow rests on a carved marble mantelpiece over which hangs a picture, of which only the lower corner is visible. Her costume is a dark evening gown cut low in the neck and sleeveless, with touches of white at bosom and shoulders. 214 OIL PAINTINGS, STUDIES AND SKETCHES LADY WARWICK AND HER SON Worcester Art Museum Exhibited at Royal Academy, 1905; at Venice international art exhibition, 1907. Of monumental size, this work, executed in 1905, was said to be a favorite with the artist himself; it was painted with a confessed liking for the subjects. The figures are at full length, and are shown in a landscape set- ting somewhat conventionalized. Lady Warwick is standing, and her little son is seated on a carved stone pedestal at her side. The finest thing about it is the spirit which guided the painter’s brush, permeated the sumptuous coloring, and brought everything into temper and keeping with the aristocratic personages represented. The affection and conscious pride of the mother are finely in accord with the dreaminess of the lithe yet frail and handsome little boy. An indefinable dramatic element in Lady Warwick’s attitude—a fine rebellious theatricalness such as we associate with some of George Meredith’s heroines rightly at war with the spirit of the age—completes the living attraction of this regal painting. Bulletin of the Worcester Art Museum MR. AND MRS. JOHN W. FIELD Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Exhibited at exhibition of the gallery of national portraiture, Pennsylvania Academy, 1905; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Mr. and Mrs. Field were the donors to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Field collection. The heads, especially that of Mrs. Field, are notable for the close, firm drawing and modelling. A nice touch of intimacy and affection is given by the confiding nature of the wife’s position as she folds both of her hands over her husband’s arm. Her character is well suggested not only in her physiognomy and expression but by the quaint old-fashioned and severe arrangement of her coiffure. This quiet and gracious couple, simplicity and worth in every feature, the man a shade more proud of his flowing beard than the woman of her smooth-brushed hair, lovely symbols of the older generation in the Ameri- can eighties, are nevertheless a trifle duller than they would seem to-day, when the importance of their silhouette would have been a matter of greater concern. A thin, reddish, careful, respectful picture, likeness written on every inch of it, nothing in it speaks of the later Sargent except the hand of 215 CATALOGUE OF JOHN SINGER SARGENT Mr. Field, upon whose arm his wife is leaning with the conventional American gesture of dependence.—New York Times. Sargent is not renowned for sentiment, but his portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Field . . . is one of the most touching interpretations of comradeship in old age that has ever been made. It is a portrait in which there is the note of the universal.—Leila Mechlin. GENERAL CHARLES J. PAINE Exhibited at Boston Art Museum, 1905, 1916, 1924 and 1925. A very fine characterization of the man. It is a very serious head in every sense of the word. The expression about the eyes is sad, and the drooping ends of the long, sparse moustache in some way accentuate the impression of low spirits. The left arm is thrown over the back of the chair and the hands are clasped loosely together. In the background is what appears to be a dimly seen carved cabinet at the left in shadow. In the thought of the public it may be supposed General Paine is mainly associated with the own- ership of the three victorious yachts which in succession won the America Cup in competition with their British rivals; while his honorable record as a soldier in the Civil War, as a director of important railroad companies, and in various public offices, is but vaguely recalled by the younger gen- eration.—W. H. D. in Boston Transcript. THE MARLBOROUGH FAMILY Blenheim Palace collection Exhibited at Royal Academy, London, 1905. A monumental work of great size and imposing effect, in which all the pompous surroundings of peer’s robes and florid architecture are brought into play. One of the most ambitious compositions produced by the artist, yet having the appearance of having been executed with the utmost ease. The poses of the figures are stately and contained; the grouping is ex- ceedingly skilful; the setting is appropriate; and in the design the pyra- midal mass composed of the figures of the Duchess and her children is excellent. The figure of the Duke has real dignity. He wears a dark blue robe with white lining. The work is held together by the strength and brilliancy of the salmon pink and gray gold of the central portion. ‘The painting of the architecture is luminous and clear; while the placing of the figures in their atmosphere and the realization of the picture space are masterly. 216 MISS BETTY WERTHEIMER Courtesy of the National Gallery, London he c 4 ‘ aah ° a) ’