Sargent's lessons

Clayton J. Beck III · 01-06-2009, 01:33 PM

Richard--I have seen a few of Carolus Duran works over the years and I agree with Sargent's assessment that he taught it well but didn't practice it with the great of abilities. On the other hand many of his time consider him the most popular portraitist on the continent in the 1860's-70s.

If one wishes to understand Duran's teaching, there is a half finished work (accepted as a Sargent student work) in the Des Moines Art Center which has been a delight to study when I am passing that way. It is a study of an old man, nude, half-length, leaning on a staff and life size. It is completely finished at the head a shoulders and gets progressively simpler as one moves down until at the last six to twelve inches of the work we are able to see the first two value block in. That is the separation of light and shadow.

The best Sargents to study are the small figures in his landscapes. They show an abbreviated but complete version of his portrait method in a very decipherable way. If you know how to study brushwork, then these are the best way to study his method.

I agree, alas, there will probably be no more insight into his working method from written sources than we already have. It's a shame. I still dream of a long lost film of the great master. Maybe someday.

Richard Budig · 01-07-2009, 10:24 AM

I used to visit an art web site (www.studioprocucts.com) (I believe this is corrrect) where the guy who runs the place promoted the following method for painting a portrait . . .

He positioned a slide projector behind a transluscent sheet on which he projected the image he wanted to paint. He set up a canvas immediately to the right of his rear projected image. He purposely threw out of focus the image he was projecting so that about all you could make out were masses. In a sight-size sort of way, he copied these very blurry masses onto his canvas. When finished with this stage, he would sharpen the image a bit, and start over, laying in some of the detail that now showed through the soft focus. He repeated this procudure until the image was sharp, and so were the detail he was adding.

I believe he had a video of this somewhere on the web site.

I mention this since it is, in a way, similar to mapping out the masses first, a la Sargent, and then working toward the specific.

I doubt that you'll be able to see this on that site nowadays since, for some weird reason, he suddenly decided (a couple of years ago) to make it a pay-site and, to my knowledge, most of his following found other sites to go to.

Clayton J. Beck III · 01-07-2009, 02:24 PM

I think I will never understand the lengths to which people who wish to learn to paint what they see will remove themselves from what they are seeing with technology. All one needs to do is squint. It costs nothing and does the job so much better. I have investigated all of the devices I can find and have found them all to be quite inferior to just seeing and painting. I'm not selling anything so I have nothing to gain by writing this. Beware of those who are selling some device to get between you and your subject(i.e. colored gels, photography, projectors, magical pieces of glass). See, analyze, paint. Nothing more is necessary.

Richard Budig · 01-07-2009, 02:38 PM

Sorry if it sounded like I was promoting this guy. I mentioned it because it is his way of seeing and putting down the masses as abstract shapes, albeit abstracted mechanically. I agree . . . squinting works, and it's free.

Alexandra Tyng · 01-07-2009, 03:19 PM

I agree also: there is no greater JOY than painting something from life. I can remember when I was a little kid, realizing that the secret to drawing was to be able to move back and forth in your mind between seeing things as abstract shapes and seeing things as actual things (to check if you were on the right track). It was very exciting! I thought it was sad that some people didn't seem able to do it. I wished they could see things the way I did. I still feel his excitement when I'm painting or drawing.

It's interesting to have Sargent's methods analyzed. never gave it a lot of conscious thought, yet I've been painting that way for years and, by some strange coincidence, Sargent was one of the artists who had an early and constant influence on me.