Sargent and Impressionism
dyk...@bvu.edu
Other writers wrote:
The landscape guy. You
> > >know, big, dramatic very realistic paintings of breathtaking scenery.
> > >American, late 19th century. It'll come to me and I'll slap my forehead in
> > >easpiration.
It's Albert Bierstadt. He was known to exhibit his huge landscapes
with magnifying glasses hung on the wall next to the paintings for the
benefit of viewers to examine the minutest detail of the paintings.
One critic reported that, for Bierstadt's next painting he planned to
paint the whole world.> > ----------
>
> It is easy to understand why JS Sargeant is not included as a master
> painter among the impressionists. He was not a master painter.
> What you might consider to be impressionistic is just his sloppy way of
>
Bunch of stuff deleted:
If you have seen Sargent's painting of the Daughters of Edward Darley
Boit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, you'd be convinced of his
mastery. The Pailleron Children portrait at the Des Moies Art Center
is another example of his superb achievement. And there's the real
key for Sargent's second class status. He was a portraitist when it
wasn't particularly fasionable to be such. In addition he developed
his personal style of portraiture which skirted stylization, and that
alone was enough to separate him from the "avant garde." I understand
that the leaders of Impressionism urged him to abandon portraiture
when he was living in Paris in the 1880's. They saw in his work the
potential for bold advances in picturation and execution. Sargent
resisted for unexplained reasons, (at least I don't know them). It may
have been that he was a one-trick-pony, (a further indictment of
inadequacy). There is another painting of a mother and child in
Boston MFA, which reveals Sargent's "mastery" of all the painterly
devices of the day. In the work are passages of the painterly style
of most of his Parisian contemporaries. It may have been his gesture
of arrogance to deploy them, prooving that those devices were'nt
particularly challenging now were they attractive enough to entertain
him.
Dennis L. Dykema
Marilyn
dyk...@bvu.edu wrote:
>
>
> If you have seen Sargent's painting of the Daughters of Edward Darley
> Boit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, you'd be convinced of his
> mastery. The Pailleron Children portrait at the Des Moies Art Center
> is another example of his superb achievement. And there's the real
> key for Sargent's second class status. He was a portraitist when it
> wasn't particularly fasionable to be such. In addition he developed
> his personal style of portraiture which skirted stylization, and that
> alone was enough to separate him from the "avant garde." I understand
> that the leaders of Impressionism urged him to abandon portraiture
> when he was living in Paris in the 1880's. They saw in his work the
> potential for bold advances in picturation and execution. Sargent
> resisted for unexplained reasons, (at least I don't know them). It may
> have been that he was a one-trick-pony, (a further indictment of
> inadequacy). There is another painting of a mother and child in
> Boston MFA, which reveals Sargent's "mastery" of all the painterly
> devices of the day. In the work are passages of the painterly style
> of most of his Parisian contemporaries. It may have been his gesture
> of arrogance to deploy them, prooving that those devices were'nt
> particularly challenging now were they attractive enough to entertain
> him.
>
> Dennis L. Dykema
With thanks to Dennis L. Dykema for such an intelligent response to
my flippant and subjective remarks on Sargent.
Portraiture was the "bread & butter" for painters during Sargent's time.
I am thinking of Sargent's watercolour landscapes and I compare him
to his contemporary, Whistler. I am carried away by Whister's landscapes,
with their atmosphere and their layers of glazes.
Perhaps by allowing one's lesser works "out there" one risks that they
will eventually diminish one's masterpieces. I will take your advice
and look up Sargent's masterpieces. Thanks.
Marilyn
Deirdre
> I am thinking of Sargent's watercolour landscapes and I compare
> him to his contemporary, Whistler. I am carried away by Whister's
> landscapes, with their atmosphere and their layers of glazes.
Yeah, but the layers of glazes is a technique you can't DO in watercolor.
So it's not a fair comparison and to berate Sargent for the limitations of
the form is simply bad criticism. There are different challenges and
standards for each.
You are certainly entitled to prefer oils.
To me, I see watercolor as the ultimate challenge -- you have to work
pretty quickly and there's only so much correction you can do. Oil can be
done by any slow painter (I was always frustrated with the drying time
myself) and anything can be corrected.
I'd say that oil is a better gauge of someone's maximum possible talent,
but watercolor shows that they don't need to slave over it for years in
order to do One Perfect Painting.
I really like some of Sargent's watercolors, particularly he did in Venice.
_Deirdre
--
http://www.sover.net/~deirdre
First alien says to the second alien, who is looking at an
apparently empty pedestal in an art gallery, "Yes, I know
it's invisible. But Is It Art?" -- Martin Young
Mdeli
dyk...@bvu.edu wrote:
> I understand
>that the leaders of Impressionism urged him to abandon portraiture
>when he was living in Paris in the 1880's. They saw in his work the
>potential for bold advances in picturation and execution. Sargent
>resisted for unexplained reasons, (at least I don't know them).
He probalbly saw that the Impressionists (those considered that today) were his
inferiors barely capable of painting his backgrounds.
> It may
>have been that he was a one-trick-pony, (a further indictment of
>inadequacy).
Sargent painted all manner of subject matter not just portraits.
> There is another painting of a mother and child in
>Boston MFA, which reveals Sargent's "mastery" of all the painterly
>devices of the day. In the work are passages of the painterly style
>of most of his Parisian contemporaries. It may have been his gesture
>of arrogance to deploy them, prooving that those devices were'nt
>particularly challenging now were they attractive enough to entertain
>him.
Nosense. Sargent's style was as impressionistic as any other impressionist.
There are hundreds of other impressionist painters famous in their day who are
vastly superior to the famous variety. They do not get the museum attention and
are rarely shown. This, because they exhibit a degree of competence and a type
of subject matter which upsets museum directors presently hung up on the total
incompetence of Twombly and de Kooning etc.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
>Dennis L. Dykema
ryan masuga
Deirdre wrote:
>Oil can be
> done by any slow painter (I was always frustrated with the drying time
> myself) and anything can be corrected.
Anything except for horrendous technique and lack of talent.
--
ryan masuga
n U y S c A
~~~~~~~~~~~
"...a bird is one egg's way of
becoming other eggs."
- Alan Watts
Bonnie Miller
I would have to disagree with you when you say that any mistakes in oils
can be covered. I don't think that's entirely true. As in watercolors,
you can loose the freshness and the clarity of your vision by overworking
a canvas. I know, because when I first started working in oils I used to
spend as long as a year on a painting and, allthough my teacher would
never tell me I had overworked it I know I did. If I were to paint them
today, with the experience I have in working with oils for l0 years, the
same painting would be much more successful I'm sure. I also use
watercolors and agree that they are a very challenging medium but do not
get as satisfaction in painting with them. I don't think they have the
depth or intensity, no matter how well they are used, as an oil painting
can move the viewer.
Bonnie
Marilyn
Deirdre wrote:
>
> In article <32FA1C...@islandnet.com>, Marilyn <si...@islandnet.com> wrote:
>
> > I am thinking of Sargent's watercolour landscapes and I compare
> > him to his contemporary, Whistler. I am carried away by Whister's
> > landscapes, with their atmosphere and their layers of glazes.
>
> Yeah, but the layers of glazes is a technique you can't DO in watercolor.
>
> So it's not a fair comparison and to berate Sargent for the limitations of
> the form is simply bad criticism. There are different challenges and
> standards for each.
>
> You are certainly entitled to prefer oils.
>
> To me, I see watercolor as the ultimate challenge -- you have to work
> done by any slow painter (I was always frustrated with the drying time
> myself) and anything can be corrected.
>
> but watercolor shows that they don't need to slave over it for years in
> order to do One Perfect Painting.
>
> I really like some of Sargent's watercolors, particularly he did in Venice.
>
> _Deirdre
>
> --
> http://www.sover.net/~deirdre
>
pastels. Any experimental artist will use anything available, even
soot. (as the first painters did)
Whistler did use watercolour paints as well.
Marilyn
From Marilyn:
I agree. Just because oil paints are slow to dry does not mean that
people who use oils are slow. Most artists will work on more than
one painting at a time, and their time in front of the canvas
actually applying paint may be very fast. The important time is the
time standing back and viewing the work, just thinking. Not enough
time is done pre-meditating most water-colour paintings.
mw
wsp
Mdeli wrote:
>
> There are hundreds of other impressionist painters famous in their day who are
> vastly superior to the famous variety. They do not get the museum attention and
> are rarely shown. This, because they exhibit a degree of competence and a type
> of subject matter which upsets museum directors presently hung up on the total
> incompetence of Twombly and de Kooning etc.
>
Again your claim sounds highly suspect; all these examples which support
your thinking are intentionally (or otherwise) hidden away somewhere. Do
they have names? Where are they hidden? How did you get the opportunity
to study them?
"Vastly superior yet rarely shown," you think this is a consipiracy
among all those incompetant lock-stepped museum directors?
Jonathan Clift
...in reply to some interesting comments on the painter John Singer
Sargent, by Dennis L. Dykema...
>Portraiture was the "bread & butter" for painters during Sargent's time.
>
>I am thinking of Sargent's watercolour landscapes and I compare him
>to his contemporary, Whistler. I am carried away by Whister's landscapes,
>with their atmosphere and their layers of glazes.
>
>Perhaps by allowing one's lesser works "out there" one risks that they
>will eventually diminish one's masterpieces. I will take your advice
>and look up Sargent's masterpieces. Thanks.
>
I don't suppose Sargent particularly thought in terms of leaving a body
of work for the future, or its composition. As you say, talent and skill
at portraiture was a way to earn a reasonable living.
Something that interests me with his portraits (and I find the same with
Gainsborough), is the variation in 'feel' between them. That's not very
precise, is it. What I mean is the way some pictures look as though he
liked the sitter a great deal, and consequently put a great deal of
effort into the work because it was important to him at a personal
level, as well as it being a business transaction. Other pictures give
the impression of boredom, and 'playing' with technique, and others
still, an appearance of active dislike for the subject.
I'm sure some people on this group would say I'm just projecting my own
prejudices about the subjects onto the pictures, and I think there's
some truth in that, but I also feel we can read a certain amount into
the work, particularly with an area where, with so much experience on
the part of the artist, fairly consistant results were achievable.
--
Jonathan Clift
Mdeli
wsp <w...@olympus.net> wrote:
I think most museum directors ignore the great artists of the 19th and 20th
centuries. They are in lock step with Modern Academic Art and have the public
believe there is nothing else.
Go look in auction catalogs and artist Dictionaries. You will find a whole other
world of art.
MD
wsp
Mdeli wrote:
>
>
> I think most museum directors ignore the great artists of the 19th and 20th
> centuries. They are in lock step with Modern Academic Art and have the public
> believe there is nothing else.
Which museum directors don't ignore these great artists and what are the
shows they did?
> Go look in auction catalogs and artist Dictionaries. You will find a whole other
> world of art.
I'm not at all interested in auctions; my shortcoming I guess. Art
dictionaries don't get much use around here either.
ryan masuga
deli: If these works are in auctions, then they are not being ignored. And if the
artist is in the dictionary, then s/he is hardly being overlooked, either. Just
because they aren't shown in a museum doesn't mean they aren't great - just not
as...great.
Regiment's Hobby Shop
I dont think that you're reading too much into the "feel" of the
portraits at all. I totally agree that Sargent projected his own
feelings and opinions of his subjects into his portraits. That ability
to let us read a personality in his portraits is what elevates them from
the common. One robber baron of the period (Fish? or Fisk? cant
remember) commissioned a portrait, went to Sargents studio to pick it up,
took one look at it, paid it in full, and left it in the studio. It
caught a cold, calculating industrialist perfectly.
AT
Mdeli
ryan masuga <mas...@novagate.com> wrote:
>wsp wrote:
>>
>> Mdeli wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > I think most museum directors ignore the great artists of the 19th and 20th
>> > centuries. They are in lock step with Modern Academic Art and have the public
>> > believe there is nothing else.
>>
>> Which museum directors don't ignore these great artists and what are the
>> shows they did?
>>
>> > Go look in auction catalogs and artist Dictionaries. You will find a whole other
>> > world of art.
>>
>> I'm not at all interested in auctions; my shortcoming I guess. Art
>> dictionaries don't get much use around here either.
>deli: If these works are in auctions, then they are not being ignored. And if the
>artist is in the dictionary, then s/he is hardly being overlooked, either.
...except by museum directors.
Just
>because they aren't shown in a museum doesn't mean they aren't great - just not
>as...great.
You mean as great as Pollock de Kooning Mondrian and Twombly etc. As great as
Modern Academic art.
MD
Mdeli
wsp <w...@olympus.net> wrote:
>Mdeli wrote:
>>
>>
>> I think most museum directors ignore the great artists of the 19th and 20th
>> centuries. They are in lock step with Modern Academic Art and have the public
>> believe there is nothing else.
>Which museum directors don't ignore these great artists and what are the
>shows they did?
>> Go look in auction catalogs and artist Dictionaries. You will find a whole other
>> world of art.
>I'm not at all interested in auctions; my shortcoming I guess. Art
>dictionaries don't get much use around here either.
The same can be said for museum directors. Thats what I'm driving at.
MD