Master Lessons from John Singer Sargent Portrait oil painting technique (Art History Documentary)

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend time with your favorite artist? Hands on with a master to learn and make your art the best it could be. Sargent is one of the few artists I would love to spend time with while I work. Seeing how he worked. I do have a treat for you. In this video one of Sargent's students give a first hand account on the studio process. There is so much to learn in this interview. So get some popcorn and your favorite drink, and let's take a walk in the past. So come with me and spend a little time with a master. The following extracts from Mr. Haley's account of Sargent's teaching at the Royal Academy Schools 1897-1900, throwing further light on his methods, the significance of his Sargent's teaching was not always immediately apparent, His hesitation was probably due to a searching out for something to grasp in the mind of the student, that achieved, he would unfold a deep earnestness, subdued but intense. He was regarded by some students as an indifferent teacher, by others as a wonder, as a wonder I like to regard him. He dealt always with the fundamentals. Many were fogged as to his aim. These fundamentals had to be constantly exercised and applied. When drawing from the model, never be without the plumb line in the left hand. Everyone has a bias, either to the right hand or the left of the vertical. The use of the plumb line rectifies this error and develops a keen appreciation of the vertical. He then took up the charcoal with arm extended to its full length, and head thrown well back. All the while intensely calculating. He slowly and deliberately mapped the proportions of the large masses of the head and shoulders. First the poise of the head upon the neck, its relation with the shoulder. Then rapidly indicate the mass of the hair, then spots locating the exact position of the features, at the same time noting their tone values and special character, finally adding any further accent or dark shadow which made up the head, the neck, the shoulders and head of the sternum. After his departure I immediately plumbed those points before any movement took place of the model and found them very accurate. A formula of his for drawing was, hit your spots in their right place and your lines precisely at their relative angles. On one occasion in the evening life school I well remember Sargent complaining that no one seemed concerned about anything more than an approximate articulation of the head upon the neck and shoulders. The procedure was to register carefully the whole pose at the first evening sitting of two hours. The remainder of the sittings were devoted to making a thoroughly finished tone drawing in chalk, adhering to the original outline, working from the head downwards thus the drawing was not affected by any chance deviation from the original pose, by the model. Sargent could not reconcile himself to this, the method he tried to inculcate was to lay in the drawing afresh at every sitting, heading in one combined effort a complete interpretation of the model, the skull to articulate properly upon the vertebrae. The same with all the limbs, a keen structural easy supple, movable machine, every figure with its own individual characteristic as like as possible, an accomplishment requiring enormous practice and experience with charcoal, the taken as a goal to aim at very desirable, a method he followed in his own painting. To the student it meant a continually altered drawing, to portray the varying moods of the model. In connection with the painting, the same principles are maintained. Painting is an interpretation of tone through the medium of color drawn with a brush. Use a large brush, do not starve your palate. Accurately place your masses with the charcoal then lay in the background about half an inch over the border of the adjoining tones, true as possible, then lay in the mass of hair, recovering the drawing and fusing the tones with the background and overlapping the flesh of the forehead. For the face lay in a middle flesh tone, light on the left side and dark on the shadow side, always recovering the drawing and most carefully fusing the flesh into the background. Paint flesh into background and background into flesh until the exact quality is obtained, both in color and tone so the whole resembles as wig maker's block. Then follows the most marked and characteristic accents of the features in place in tone and in drawing as accurate as possible, painting deliberately into wet ground, testing your work by repeatedly standing well back, viewing it as a whole, a very important thing. After this take up the subtler tones which express the retiring planes of the head, temples, chin, nose, and cheeks with neck, then the still more subtle drawing of mouth and eyes, fusing tone into tone all the time, until finally with deliberate touch the highlights are laid in, this occupies the first sitting and should the painting not be satisfactory. The whole is ruthlessly fogged by brushing together, the object being not to allow any parts well done, to interfere with that principle of oneness or unity of every part, the brushing together engendered an appetite to attack the problem afresh at every sitting, each attempt resulting in a more complete visualization in the mind. The process is repeated until the canvas is completed. Sargent would press home the fact that the subtleties of paint must be controlled by continually viewing the work from a distance. Stand back, get well away, and you will realize the great danger there is over overstating a tone. Keep the thing as a whole in your mind. Tones so subtle as not to be detected on close acquaintance can only be adjusted by this means. When we were gathered in front of our display of sketches for composition awaiting some criticism, Sargent would walk along the whole collection, rapidly looking at each one, and without singling out any in particular for comment, he would merely say, get in your mind the sculptor's view of things, arrange a composition decoratively, easy, and accidental. This would be said in a hesitating manner, and then he would quietly retire. On one occasion, when the subject set for a composition was a portrait, the criticism was, not one of them seriously considered. Many we had thought quite good, as an indication of what might be tried while a portrait was in progress. That would not do for Sargent. A sketch must be seriously planned, tried and tried again, turned about until it satisfies every requirement, and a perfect visualization is attained. A sketch must not be merely a pattern of pleasant shapes, just pleasing to the eyes, just merely a fancy. It must be a very possible thing, a definite arrangement, everything fitting in a plan and in true relationship frankly standing upon a horizontal plane coinciding in their place with a pre-arranged line. As a plan is to a building, so must the sketch be to the picture. Cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind without ceasing a continuous stream of observations, from which to make selections later. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight, and everything that is to be seen the power of selection will follow. Be continually making mental notes, make them again and again, test what you remember by sketches until you have got them fixed. Do not be backward at using every device and making every experiment that ingenuity can devise, in order to attain that sense of completeness which nature so beautifully provides, always bearing in mind the limitations of the materials in which you work. It was not only students who acknowledged that adept to Sargent. Hubert Herkimer in his reminiscences writes I have learnt much from Sargent in the planning of lights and darks, the balance and tonality of background in its relation to the figure, the true emphasizing of essentials. Sargent was well aware of the pitfalls that await the painter of the fashionable world, and as sitter after sitter took his place on the dais in his tight street studio he seemed to become more sensible of them. He tried again and again to escape, and he often in his letters expressed his fatigue. He weared of the limitations imposed by his commissioned art. Painting those who want to be painted, instead of those whom the artist wants to paint, leads inevitably to a bargain, to a compromise between the artist's individuality and the claims of the model. Mannerism becomes a way out and which pleases becomes an aim. Artistic problems give way before personal considerations, that a decorative quality of a picture takes a secondary place. Sargent's sincerity, the driving need he had to express himself in his own way, his satiety with models imposed on him by fashion, culminated in revolt. He was forced now and then, it is true, to return to his portraits. But his Boston work absorbed him more and more, the call of his studio in Fulham Road when he was in London, and at the Alps in the south of Europe in summer, came first. In 1910 his exhibits at the Academy instead of portraits, Glacier Streams, Albanian Olive Gatherers, Vespers in a Garden at Corfu, at the New English Art Club, Flannels, on the Guy Deca, the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, a Florentine Nocturne, a Moraine and Olive Grove. When in 1901 Mr. J. B. Manson, then a student, wrote to Sargent for advice he received the following reply, in reply to your questions I fear that I can only give you the most general advice. The only school in London of which I have any personal knowledge is the Royal Academy. If the limit of age does not prevent your entering it I should advise you to do so. There are also very good teachers at the Slade School. You say you are studying painting to become a portrait painter. I think you would be making a great mistake if you kept it only in view during the time you intend to work on a life class, where the object of the student should be to acquire sufficient command over his material to do whatever nature presents to them. It is evident that in his student days Sargent shared the apprehension excited in the studio by his brilliant, free-spoken teacher Carolus Duran. In art tout sait qu'il n'est pas indispensable es nucible, in art, all that is not indispensable is unnecessary was one of the precepts which Duran had formulated after his study of Velasquez. It became one of the texts of his studio. He urged his students to make copies of the pictures of Velasquez in the Louvre, not laborious copies, but copies au premier coup. In painting a picture he would retreat a few steps from the canvas and then once more advance with his brush balanced in his hand as though it were a rapier and he were engaged in a bout with a fencing master. These gestures were often accompanied by appeals to the shade of Velasquez. Those who watched Sargent painting in his studio were reminded of his habit of stepping backwards after almost every stroke of the brush on the canvas and the tracks of his paces so worn on the carpet that it suggested a sheep run through the heather. He when in difficulties, had a sort of battle cry of demons, demons, with which he would dash at his canvas. It was then to such a workshop and under such a master that Sargent at the age of eighteen was admitted as a pupil, and the question arises, what did Sargent owe to the teaching of Duran? The question is best answered by remembering Duran's precepts and seeing how far they are reflected in Sargent's art. It has already been shown how Duran insisted on the study of Velasquez and the omission in art of all that was not essential to the realization of the central purpose of a painting. He had himself traveled far from the sharp contrast of values by which he had dramatized his picture Lasassine. He had got rid of his tendency to be spectacular. From Velasquez he had learned to simplify. His teaching was focused on the study of values and halftones, above all, halftones. Here lies he would say the secret of painting in the halftone of each plane, in economizing the accents and in the handling of the lights so that they should play their part in the picture only with a palpable and necessary significance. Other things were subordinate. If Sargent excels in these respects, it is sufficient to recall the fact that they formed the core of Duran's instruction. There is no need to put his influence higher. Few pupils in painting who have the talent to absorb their master's teaching fail in the long run to outgrow his influence and to progress beyond and outside it on lines of their own. Sargent himself always recognized his debt to the teaching of Duran. At the height of his fame when looking at a portrait by a younger painter, he observed to Mr. William James, that his value. I wonder who taught him to do that. I thought Carolus was the only man who taught that. He couldn't do it himself, but he could teach it. Again, when Mr. James asked him how to avoid false accents he said. You must classify the values. If you begin with the middle tone and work up from in towards the darks, so that you deal less with your highest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents. That's what Carolus taught me. And Franz Halse. It's hard to find anyone who knew more about oil painting than Franz Halse. That was his procedure. Of course a sketch is different. You don't mind false accents there. But once you have made them in something which you wish to carry far, in order to correct them you have to deal with both sides of them and get into a lot of trouble. So that's the best method for anything you wish to carry far in oil paint. Mr. George Moore, in one of the most illuminating essays in modern painting, said. In 1830 values came upon France like a religion. Rembrandt was the new messiah, Holland was the holly land, and disciples were busy dispensing the propaganda in every studio. The religion had no more ardent apostle than Carolus Duran. One picture Sargent exhibited at the academy in 1896 may be especially mentioned because it elected the warm admiration of Mr. George Moore, who was far from being enthusiastic about Sargent. Mr. Moore wrote of this portrait. Miss Priestly, gradually a pale-faced woman with archedy brows, draws our eyes and fixes our thoughts. It is a portrait by Mr. Sargent, one of the best he has painted. By the side of a Franz Hals it might look small and thin, but nothing short of a fine Hals would affect its real beauty. My admiration for Mr. Sargent has often hesitated, but this picture completely wins me. The rendering is full of the beauty of incomparable skill. The portrait tells us that he has learned the last and most difficult lesson. How to omit a beautiful work, certainly. I should call it a perfect work were it not that the drawing is a little too obvious, in places we can detect the matter. It does not coulée due source like the drawing of the very great masters. It was a common experience for Sargent, as probably for all portrait painters, to be asked to alter some feature in a face, generally the mouth. Indeed this happened so often that he used to define a portrait as a likeness in which there was something wrong about the mouth. He rarely exceeded, and then only when he was already convinced that it was wrong. In the case of Francis Jenkinson, the Cambridge librarian, it was pointed out that he had omitted many lines and wrinkles which ought to be shown on the model's face. Sargent refused to make, he said, a railway system of him. His refusal more than once led to scenes. On one occasion the lady who had taken exception to the rendering of her mouth became hysterical and fainted. Sargent was the last man in the world to cope with such a situation. A friend who happened to call found him helplessly contemplating the scene. The model was restored to sense. But the mouth remained as it was. A sitter has given the following account of being painted by Sargent in 1902. At one of my sittings during which Mr. Sargent painted my hands I sat motionless for two hours. A certain way in which I had unconsciously put my hands together pleased him very much because the posture, he said, was clearly natural to me. He implored me not to move. We worked very hard, he with his magical brush. I with my determination to control fidgets and the restless instincts to which sitters are prone when forced to remain still for any length of time. For the most part we were silent. Occasionally I heard him muttering to himself. Once I caught Gainsborough would have done it. Gainsborough would have done it. He worked at a fever heat, and it was so infectious that I felt my temples throbbing in sympathy with his efforts, the veins swelling in my brow. At one moment I thought I was going to faint with the sense of tension and my fear to spoil the pose which had enthused him. At the end of two hours he declared that the hands were a failure, and he obliterated them. I must try again next time, he said in a melancholy tone. At the next sitting he painted the hands quickly as they now appear, a tour de force in the opinion of some, utterly unsuccessful in the view of others. My husband came several times to the sittings. On one occasion Mr. Sargent sent for him specially. He rode across the park to Tight Street, he found Mr. Sargent in a depressed mood. The opals baffled him. He said he couldn't paint them. They had been a nightmare to him, he declared, throughout the painting of the portrait. That morning he was certainly in despair. Presently he said to my husband, let's play a foray duet. They played Mr. Sargent thumping out the bass with strong, stumpy fingers. At the conclusion Mr. Sargent jumped up briskly, went back to the portrait and with a few quick strokes, dabbed in the opals. He called to my husband to come and look, I've done the damn thing, he laughed under his breath. My sister, on the occasion of her visit to the studio during my last sitting, remembers seeing Mr. Sargent paint my scarf with one sweep of his brush. What appeared to interest him more than anything else when I arrived was to know what music I had brought with me. To turn from color to sound evidently refreshed him, and presumably the one art stimulated the other in his brain. See, I said there was a lot to learn. So what did we learn? Even a master had a bad day and artwork too. If you notice I used unfinished works so we can study the painting under the painting. As with any great painting the underpainting is just as important as the top. I suggest you go through and stop to study each work, taking it apart and seeing how Sargent started a masterpiece. Almost straight from the master with very good advice on many levels. I have another video with more information about how Sargent painted and looks at painting itself by another student. Now it's time to get out the paints and canvases and get to work. Thanks for watching, check out my channel for more advice to improve your painting saving you time.