Sargent

He painted what he saw, even as a child, never the fantasy of imagination. At eighteen he was doing signature work. Born in 1856, died in 1925 (the same year Wyatt Earp died, my father was born in 1920, just saying) and spans, embodies, the entire discussion of modernity. Painted, in the open air, with Monet; shared, for a time, studio space with Whistler. His oil paintings sometimes look like watercolors. Some of his watercolors are unbelievably fine. Over 600 portraits. In his wonderful painting of Lady Agnew, not just the hands, but the way the arms look, under sheer fabric, is astounding. I've studied a full page reproduction of this painting, with a magnifying glass, for hours. A large and heavy book, thirteen by eleven inches, five pounds; I have bruises on my thighs, where I rest it, propped against my desk. I've seen a great many of his paintings, in Boston and elsewhere, and I always make the guards uneasy, because I mimic what I know to have been his manner in the studio. He set his easel close to the sitter and walked away from it, to view from a distance, then charged the canvas, to make a few strokes. One guard, who also was a knowledgeable docent, this was at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston, understood exactly what I was doing, and told me notice the knuckles in a particular portrait. Whipped out my glass, I've always carried a magnifying glass, ever since I first read "Sherlock Holmes", to see what he was talking about, and the knuckles were mere blobs of paint, not unlike what Chuck Close does, and from the 'viewing distance', which is to say, in the case of Sargent, in the life size portraits, about 15 feet, they were perfectly articulated fingers. Magic, as Sargent's friend Henry James often said about S's ability to reproduce the effect of fabric. Effect, I think being the operative term. James tended to pair painting and writing as methods of cutting to the heart of experience. I tend to think of it as the Americanization of Proust. Neither the written word nor a painting is reality. All I can do is narrow the difference. He, I mean, Sargent. Even with the very best of non-fiction writing, the writer is revealed. It's the nature of words. A painter, in the line, the choice of color, in the tonal modulation, is revealed. Sargent's models were Velazquez and Frans Hals. He played with Impressionism, especially in the watercolors, but he loved sharp lines, which they did not, where one thing becomes another. Rocks, for instance, have sharp edges, not a dalliance with transition. I'm also reading Otto Rank, which should count for something, Freud never addressed the creative mind. Phone's back in service, I'd better send this.