Rare notes on John Singer Sargent

Notes on John Singer Sargent - From various sources, really rare information from an American Master

Sargent Notes

[Karin Wells]

Due to an unfortunate smudge, I am unable to make out all the words in the last paragraph on page 1. Can anyone with a better monitor help me out?

Also, does anyone have OCR so that they can put this information into a more legible format?

Thanks

[Cynthia Daniel]

I downloaded the zipped file of those pages. It was at the bottom of the above-mentioned page. The smudge is not on that copy. The zipped file consists of all the pages as a .gif, or graphical file, but possibly still readable when printed.

There's a lack of clarity and printing from the .gif files will add to that, being another generation away from the original. However, when I get a chance, I'll try scanning and OCRing the pages and let you know if I have success. In the meantime, I've loaded the zip file onto the server and you can access it here:

Sargent Notes

By the way, you'll need WinZip on your system to uncompress the zipped files and access them. If you don't have WinZip, a trial version is downloadable for free at www.winzip.com

What the paragraph says that has the smudge is:

"He then with a bit of charcoal placed the head with no more than a few careful lines over which he pressed a rag, so that it was a perfectly clean grayish colored canvas (which he preferred) faintly showing where the lines had been."

[Darla Dixon]

What a great post! Thanks for sharing it, lfox!

[Cynthia Daniel]

Darla,

Ifox was on the old forum before our revamp, but I don't think he/she has come back. However, the information was too interesting to lose, so I made a point to move the post over to the new one.

[William Forward]

Thank you for reposting the Sargent notes. They are the most complete description of his methods that I've come across, and I've read a lot about JSS. Several of the passages are quoted in Stanley Olsen's biography, but I'm wondering what the source of this material is. Could it be from Evan Charteris's book, written shortly after Sargent died?

[Sharon Knettell]

The Sargent notes. Where are they now?

[Steven Sweeney]

Sharon,

An unanswered question niggles at my fringes (which I believe is legal only in Massachussetts) and causes what some might precipitously mischaracterize as Tourette

[Sharon Knettell]

Thanks, Steven,

But a niggling suspicion in my fringe tells me, living as it were, a mere half mile from Massachussetts, is that were I to know and somehow absorb, every detail of his technique, my work would still resemble a Knettell.

[Cynthia Daniel]

The Sargent notes got zapped during the upgrade of the Forum software some months back. I've reloaded them.

Sargent Notes