Channeling Winslow Homer

The Met has a new exhibit, theoretically of Sargent’s portraits of his friends and fellow artists.  But they have a small room with what looks like their entire holdings of his watercolors which are not related to the theme.  They must have been left with an extra room.  But, first, here’s his  oil portrait of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, one of the oddest artist’s name.  I’ve explained how he happened to have changed his last name to the same as his middle name elsewhere in this blog.  He was a playboy and amateur watercolorist who did very fast, super-juicy watercolors whom Sargent encouraged to exhibit.

 

And here’s a oil sketch of his friend, Ramon Subercaseau, sketching in a Venitian gondola in 1880 which shows how long it’s been hard to juggled watercolor stuff when working outside.

What startled me was that the Met has a whole series of watercolors of male nudes, including a lot of the “Tommy” painting done of World War II English soldiers who were nicknamed that and some nudes from Florida.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and some others

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Marc Taro Holmes pointed out in his perceptive review of the Brooklyn Museum and Boston Museum of Fine Arts show of their holdings of Sargent watercolors, Sargent’s technique was often to use the same approach he used with oils, instead of starting with the lights and proceeding to the darks, he would do the mid tones in watercolor and use gouache for the lights, perfectly acceptable in his day.  In fact, Winslow Homer started this way, but caught on to the prevailing preference for pure watercolors.   Sargent’s famous bravura brush technique is still somewhat evident, but Homer was taught by LaFarge how the Japanese used their watercolor in a much more watery or juicy way.  Also Sargent uses the same palette for all his watercolors.  Nothing wrong with this when you’re making them for yourself — as Sargent was — but, when they are hung all together in a gallery it is quite evident and too repetitive.  As often suggested, if you are painting for a show, don’t use the same palette for all the pictures you are going to hang.

By the way, it was not a frivolous change when the public wanted paintings only done with watercolor.  As LaFrage taught Homer, it is a completely different Asian-inspired aesthetic.

The old oil portraits of Sargent’s friends on display are often disappointing, incidently. Granted they were quickly done and he had the license to be “experimental”, but a lot of them are washed out and the edges all similar and indistinct — somewhat like what an over-cleaned Renaissance painting looks like.  One of them would be unacceptable at the school at which I teach.  On the other hand, they have hung some really great ones like of Wertheimer.  Altogether the ones that were given away are a textbook lesson in what little you can do to convey a form or object.  One has to remember that his theory was that there was one place in the paint which he called “the effect” where the eye is drawn by a sharp contrast of color or value. (In big paintings I think he would admit to a few such “effects.”  The rest was played down.)

At the beginning of the exhibition, there are some easel paintings that are small and hung at eye level which allows you to really look at how he drew the face, particularly the eyes.  (Sargent like Velasquesz and Carolas Duran, his teacher, didn’t use an underdrawing, but “found the drawing while painting”). These small sketches are so differently displayed from the big monsters that are hung very high so your eye is often at the level of the feet.   These are very valuable along with the charcoal drawings he insisted on doing instead of oils at the end of his career ,  make the exhibition really valuable for the artist — as I suppose his really bad paintings do too as well (we all should throw out a certain percentage of what we do.)