John Singer Sargent, Paris
On a recent trip to Paris, I was delighted to find I could catch the Singer Sargent exhibition that I had been so sorry to miss in London, a felicitous drawing back to Singer Sargent, in my most favourite of cities. He has always had a gravitational pull, that pleasure of familiarity that deepens rather than fades. Visiting the exhibition was like returning to a conversation already in progress with an old friend. The RA exhibition of 2010, ‘Sargent and the Sea’ has never left me.
Standing in front of the paintings, what struck me most was not the subject matter, although his compositional style is striking, but the certainity. Sargent’s extraordinary confidence of touch. His decisiveness. The way so much is conveyed but without clamour. Nothing is laboured. There is no noise. Instead, everything rests on the quality of his looking, and his quality demands ours. Therein lies the joy.
This emphasis on looking has long been an important part of the studio. I sense in front of his works that Sargent worked quickly, but without haste. If so, I surmise that his speed came from clarity — from knowing instinctively what mattered, and what did not. Once the thought was caught in paint, he stopped. There is a discipline in that restraint which we reach for too, flowers are fleeting, responsive, and unforgiving of hesitation. Indecisiveness loosens the thread. Pace is helpful.
Walking through the exhibition, I was reminded as with so many great artists, how much of Sargent’s power lies in what he leaves unsaid, in some sense the equivalent of our negative space in floral work. A sleeve dissolves into air. A background barely holds. Flowers, when they appear, are gestural imprints, marks made lightly, rather than declarations. Sargent allows, nay encourages, the viewer to complete the picture, to meet the work with eyes that look rather than see.
Artist John Singer Sargent Title Mrs. Charles Gifford Dyer (Mary Anthony) Place United States (Artist's nationality:) Date 1880 Medium Oil on canvas
That allowing us, that encouraging, that trust, is the gift. In painting, as in flowers, there is always the temptation to do more — to fill the space, to explain, to keep adding more. Sargent resists this entirely; that is his lesson to us. His work reminds us that clarity is not austerity, nor unkindness, and that generosity often lies in knowing when to stop —- and having the intellectual courage to do so.
Leaving the exhibition, I carry with me not only images, but a renewed clarity of approach: to look harder, to work with confidence and at pace, and to allow space for things to breathe. These are lessons that feel as vital in the field and studio as they do on the gallery wall — and ones we return to often, in the quiet rhythm of the work.
Like a conversation with a recently picked up again old friend, I part refreshed, enlarged and with newly minted eyes.