Richard Ormond on John Singer Sargent
by Coni Belleau Adams
It's
amazing how far greatness reaches! This past November 14, as one of
the highlights of the American Society of Portrait Artists Festival,
John Singer Sargent and his greatness took form once more in the incredible
persona of Richard Ormond, Sargent's grand nephew. Mr. Ormond re-acquainted
us with some familiar images of the past including the magnificent portrait
of Sargent's teacher Carolus-Duran, the Wyndham sisters, and the Boit
children.
Ormond opened his slide presentation with Sargent's
Two Wine Glasses. It was a wonderful reminder of Sargent's faculty
for observation. As Ormond remarked, in this small oil canvas (18 by
14 1/2 inches), we see the extraordinary fluency of a student who has
been using oils for less than a year (it was painted in 1875). The vivid
treatment of the suffused shadows and flickering sunlight, the broken
brushstrokes and highly keyed color, all point unmistakably to an impressionist
source. In this painting it has been suggested that Sargent borrowed
from Manet.
We are now reintroduced to Madame Gatreau. It was Madame
Gatreau's (Madame X) decolletage, the brazen and provocative way in
which she displayed her body, the strange artificial mauve color of
her skin, and her disdainful hauteur, which so outraged contemporary
audiences of the salon of 1884. The painting became the center of a
minor scandal!
Relatively
few of Sargent's prolific output of landscapes survive. Home Fields
(c1885) inscribed and signed bottom left: To my friend Bramley/John
S. Sargent. (Bramley is artist Frank Bramley). This painting is a characteristic
example of Sargent's concern with fleeting light effects and his highly
keyed palette. The fence in the foreground, treated in a series of jagged
brush strokes, leads the eye into a shimmering patchwork of greens,
russets and blue-grays.
We are drawn now to the lovely daughters of Edward
Darley Boit, an American artist and friend of Sargent. Mr. Ormond reminds
us that it is Valasquez's influence that has dictated the composition
and color scheme (chiefly blacks and grays). Although dark backgrounds
and distilled light and shadow were implicit in Sargent's early painting,
the aura of intense reality was sharpened through his contact with Valasquez.
Sargent's Venetian interiors, with their cool echoing spaces, culminate
in his extraordinary portrait of the Boit children with its indebtedness
to las meninas.
We are intrigued once again by the loveliness of The
Wyndham Sisters (1899) and the expression of Sargent's passion for
Spanish music and dancing in El Jaleo. In this 94 1/2 by 137 inch oil
painted in 1882, the relatively shallow space is constructed like a
stage, defined at the back by a row of frenzied musicians, and dominated
in front by the dramatic and sinuous movement of the dancer. The lighting
from below emphasizes the theatricality of the scene, and the knobs
on the original frame were constructed to look like footlights.
Ormond
so celebrated his grand uncle's incredible talent, we felt as though
we were being led through the slide show by the great man himself. Further
images were placed before us – the portrait of Sargent's friend Paul
Helleu sketching his wife (1889). The Sitwell Family (1900),
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885). The dynamic portrait of Sir
Frank Athelstane Swettenham (1904). The Italian painter Ambrozio Raffele
in his studio (1904). We even got a glimpse of those famous Boston Library
murals unveiled October 20, 1921.
It went by all too quickly but we will be ever grateful
to Richard Ormond for this visit and his insightful observations of
the work of his famous ancestor, John Singer Sargent.
Richard Ormond, director of the National Maritime Museum
in London, has recently co-authored the newly published volume one of
the Sargent Catalogue Raisonne, The Early Portraits. This spring
an exhibition of Sargent's paintings will be held at the National Gallery
of Art in Washington, D.C.
(Reference for artistic observations from Richard Ormond's
book, John Singer Sargent, published in 1970.)
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Native New Yorker Coni Belleau Adams studied at Parsons School of Design
and the Art Students League, as well as under great painters Robert
Brackman, N.A., Sidney Dickenson, and Daniel E. Greene, N.A.
