Sargent

An essay about the painter John Singer Sargent from a contemporary that knew him.

Excerpt from the book: I once had occasion to call on Mr. Sargent, and was shown into a room with a black carpet. Only a colourist loves black, and sees it as a colour. And this room, so free from all that was novel and without associations, helped to explain to me why, though his method is so modern and of the moment, his pictures of aristocrats accommodate themselves to ancestral surroundings. For it is true that not only the face and the clothes of his sitters are given, but somehow, in the material of paint, their social position and their distinction. Supreme is the art of Sargent in its appreciation of those pleasures which would almost seem for art alone. Perhaps the next generation will feel that it owes more to him than to any painter of this time.

This book is an unabridged reprint of the first edition published by T. C. & E. C. Jack, London, and Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York, in 1909 as part of the Masterpieces Series---a collection of essays about painters. Typeset and republished by Michael W. Gioffredi. MichaelGioffredi.com/d254