American Painting and Its Traditions

John Van Dyke

Courtesy of Scribner & Sons, 1919

“Sargent did not wholly achieve art, for some of it was born to him, and some of it, perhaps, was thrust upon him. Training started him right, but his great success is not wholly due to that. Genius alone can account for the remarkable content of his work.

“Sargent’s life has been the result of peculiar circumstances—fortunate circumstances some may think; unfortunate others may hold. At least they have been instrumental in bringing forth an accomplished painter whose art no one can fail to admire. That his work may be admired understandingly it is quite necessary to comprehend the personality of the artist—to understand his education, his associations, his artistic and social environments. For if the man himself is cosmopolitan his art is not less so. It is the perfection of world-style, the finality of method.

“If I apprehend Sargent rightly, such theory of art as he possesses is founded in observation. Some fifteen years ago, in Gibraltar, at the old Cecil Hotel, I was dining with him. That night, as a very unusual thing, Sargent talked about painting—talked of his own volition. He suggested his theory of art in a single sentence: ‘You see things that way’ (pointing slightly to the left) ‘and I see them this way’ (pointing slightly to the right). He seemed to think that would account for the variation or peculiarity of eye and mind, and with a manner of doing—a personal method—there was little more to art. Such a theory would place him in measured agreement with Henry James whose definition of art has been quoted many times: ‘Art is a point of view, and a genius a way of looking at things.’

“A painter who has been looking at human heads for many years sees more than the man who casually looks up to recognize an acquaintance on the street. I do not mean that he sees more ‘character’—that is more scholarship or conceit, or pride of purse or firmness of will or shrewdness of thought, but merely that he sees the physical conformation more completely than others do. Every one sooner or later moulds his own face. It becomes marked or set or shaped in response to continued methods of thinking and acting. When that face comes under the portrait painter’s eye, he does not see the scholar, the banker, the senator, the captain of industry; but he does see perhaps, certain depression of the cheek or lines about the eyes or mouth in contractions of the lips or protrusions of the brow or jaw that appeal to him strongly because they are cast in shadow or thrown up sharply in relief of light. These surface features he paints perhaps with more emphasis than they possess in the original because they appeal to him emphatically, and presently the peculiar look that indicates the character of the man appears. What the look may indicate, or what kind of phase of character may be read in or out of the look, the portrait-painter does not know or care. He paints what he sees and has as little discernment of a character as of a mind. He gives, perhaps, without knowing their meaning, certain protrusions and recessions of the surface before him and lets the result tell what it may. In the production of the portrait accurate observation is more than half the battle. If a painter sees and knows his subject thoroughly, he will have little trouble in telling what he sees and knows; and to say of Sargent that he observes rightly and records truly is to state the case in a sentence.”

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