JOHN SARGENT BOOK

Sargent's Life through his writing, paintings and drawings

Chapter XXV

COROT is reported to have said during the righting on  the barricades in 1848: "What is the matter? Are we  not satisfied with the Government ?" Detachment from  events beyond the studio or study walls has been characteristic  of many great artists. During the siege of Paris Gautier wrote:  
Pendant les guerres de l'Empire  Goethe, au bruit du canon brutal,  Fit le divan occidental.  

Comme Goethe sur son divan  A Weimar s'isolait des choses  Et d'Hafiz effeuillait les roses.  
Sans prendre garde a l'ouragan  Qui fouettait mes vitres fermees,  Moi, j'ai fait emaux et camees.  
This spirit of isolation belonged markedly to Sargent. He  had, as we have seen, no business instinct whatever; he left  the management of his affairs to others and was ignorant of  the way they were conducted. He extended this ignorance,  coupled with considerable indifference, to the administration  of the world's affairs. He read no newspapers; he had the  sketchiest knowledge of current movements outside art; his  receptive credulity made him accept fabulous items of information without question. He would have been puzzled to answer  if he were asked how nine-tenths of the population lived, he  would have been dumb foundered if asked how they were  governed.  
It was rather surprising in a man of reading and culture, but  there it was; but while his ignorance of how the world was run was sometimes disconcerting in conversation, it was disarming  in its simplicity.  

When the War broke out he failed at first to realize its significance; he was very slow in relating himself to it. In this  he differed strikingly from Henry James, who was consumed from  the outset with a flame of intense and passionate sympathy for  the cause of the Allies. Indeed, Henry James was so little able  to understand Sargent's aloofness in the early part of the War  that their friendship suffered from a temporary coolness.  

August, 1914, found Sargent painting in the Dolomites with  Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Stokes and Colonel Ernest Armstrong in a  remote part of the mountains. W 7 hen news reached them that  War had been declared Sargent's sole anxiety was for the fate  of his sister Emily, who was in the north of France. As soon  as he heard of her safety, he began unconcernedly painting  again. Towards the end of August Colonel Armstrong was  carried off as a prisoner of war by the Austrians to Trieuil, a few  hours' journey away. He was soon in difficulties with the authorities, but Sargent in the mountains "with the high pasturing  kine" went on with his painting. The War might have been  in another planet for all the impression it made on his mind.  The world might rock and crumble unperceived by him in the  intensity of his concentration. At the beginning of October,  having been a prisoner for more than a month, Colonel Armstrong  wrote an urgent appeal to Sargent to come and see him. Sargent  at last descended from his fastness; he interviewed the authorities  in company with an Austrian acquaintance, Karl Maldona, and  as a result procured the release of his brother artist.  

Now no one who knew Sargent would for a moment attribute  his attitude to want of heart. All who knew him would agree  that he responded on the instant to emergencies which he under-  stood, and that his sympathies were particularly lively and  generous the moment he realized that there was occasion for  them. But the War was outside his ken, and so involved with  consequences and questions of which he was entirely ignorant,  that he seemed merely conscious of being rather isolated. It  was as if his imagination had suffered a complete breakdown. No sooner had Colonel Armstrong been released than Sargent  withdrew again to the mountains and resumed his painting,  remaining in the Tyrol till November, when he returned to  England. His reaction to the War was as yet nothing more  definite than mild boredom. However that may be, it was a  frame of mind of short duration.  

In 1915 he exhibited at the Academy portraits of F. J. H.  Jenkinson, University Librarian at Cambridge and Earl Curzon  of Kedleston. The portrait of Jenkinson is one of his most easy  and fluent achievements. In the Academy it formed a sharp  contrast with the picture of Lord Curzon. It is a peculiarity  of Sargent's art that some of his least distinguished portraits  are those of the most distinguished men. This picture of Lord  Curzon deals rather harshly with outside trappings and aspect.  It tells little of the character, the intellectual force, the distinguished career, and the powerful personality of the sitter.  It has the relative inadequacy noticeable, in the portraits of  Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Balfour, President Roosevelt and Lord Roberts. In each of these portraits it is as if the  artist in his desire to be truthful had understated his case, and  in his anxiety to exclude the element of prestige had missed  some of the personality of his sitter.  

Early in 1916 Sargent again went to America. In the late  summer he went on a sketching expedition to the Rocky  Mountains and the west of America. He wrote to his friend  and relative Mrs. Hale:  

Dear Cousin Mary,

At the risk of importuning you with this persistent letter  writing, here I go again. As I told you in my first or my last it was  raining and snowing, my tent flooded, mushrooms sprouting in my  boots, porcupines taking shelter in my clothes, canned food always  fried in a black frying pan getting on my nerves, and a fine waterfall  which was the attraction to the place pounding and thundering all  night. I stood it for three weeks and yesterday came away with a  repulsive picture. Now the weather has changed for the better and  I am off again to try the simple life (ach pfui) in tents at the top of  another valley, this time with a gridiron instead of a frying pan and a perforated India rubber mat to stand on. It takes time to learn how  to be really happy.  

Life was different in the Montana National Park, with the pleasant  company of the Livermores. There we toured about over new trails  every day. Mrs. Livermore is perfectly delightful and plays chess.  Alas she went back east, and struck Chicago in the heat wave. The  refrigerated dining room at the Blackstone Hotel saved her life, as it  did all ours two weeks before. It is worth while flying there from  any part of America during a heat wave. You sit in a perfect temperature over an excellent dinner and watch the crowd dying like flies outside of the window. Nero or Caligula could not have improved on it.  

Please take your courage in both hands and write me a line to this   hotel. I will pounce upon it when I get back from my next plunge   into canned food — thirty miles away.

 J J Yours ever,

John S. Sargent.

In the autumn he returned to Boston and in November  agreed with the Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts to decorate  the rotunda. The undertaking was completed by October,  1921, when he at once entered into another contract to decorate  the main stairway and library. This latter work, finished before  he died, was unveiled on November 3, 1925. He was pleased  with the reception given to his decoration in the rotunda and  wrote in November, 1921, to Mrs. Hale:  
31, Tite Street,

Nov. 25th, 1921.
. . . Your good news about the Museum has been corroborated  by various other letters and newspaper cuttings, and the fact that it  is considered a success is proved by the Museum wanting more. They  ask me to do the staircase . . . tra la la ... it shall be done, and I  am pegging away at my generals, in a dense fog that has lasted two  weeks, with that light before me.  

1916, the year in which he made the contract with the Trustees  of the Museum, also saw the completion of his work at the Boston  Library. Meanwhile the War had long begun, slowly but  surely, to affect his imagination. In December, 1915, he had  suffered a great loss in the death of Henry James, whom he had  known for thirty years. Henry James had communicated to  him, copiously enough, his sense of "living in a nightmare of the deepest dye," and of the War as "a huge horror of blackness."  By degrees that came to be Sargent's own point of view. He  gradually replaced the passive and balanced attitude of an  ordinary American living in Europe, by an outlook warmly  generous and deeply sympathetic. The most decisive and public  symptom of this awakening was his resignation of the Prussian  Ordre pour le Merite, tendered through diplomatic channels as  early as 191 5. Letters from America show his personal anxiety.  On June 8, 191 6, he wrote to me:  

My dear Evan,

What a world you are living in — and what a succession of tremendous events have happened. That Irish affair — then that naval  battle and now the loss of Kitchener, sledge hammer blows that shake  us over here.  
Please write — I would like to know how you personally feel about  it all — my sister mentioned in one of her letters that Lord Elcho,  and, I am told, Cynthia's husband are prisoners in Egypt — Does this  mean that they are prisoners of Turks or Arabs on the other side of  the Red Sea ? where else could it be — I am very sorry to hear it, if it  is true please let me know.  
I am terribly busy here with the carrying out of the plaster work   of my ceiling — it is progressing well but it will be a long job, and I   have to work like a nigger at modelling things that the workmen wait to   carry off and cast. I doubt if all this is accomplished so that I can put   up my paintings before the midsummer heat sets in — when that comes   in July or August I shall be off to the Rockies for mountain air and   sketching and return to this work in September. I wonder whether   these great blows are affecting the moral. My sister's letters are   intentionally cheerful but they date back many weeks. Please give   me your own news and those of mutual friends — write as soon as you  
can.
Yrs. ever,

John S. Sargent.

Later he wrote:

 July 25, 1916.

My dear Evan,

Our letters must have crossed, and yours is the saddest of answers  to my question about the prisoners — it moved me very much to learn  this cruel blow to your family. There had indeed been a piling up  of tragedies when you wrote and coming very close home. All the  news that has reached us over hereof the great allies drive arc heartening, and many people believe that the last act has begun. The " page  of honour"* seems now to be "attending" the British, the French,  and the Russians, God bless him.  

I left Boston a week ago, the work that I personally had to do with  my own hands being accomplished — now the plasterers, painters and  gilders will do the rest, which will take another month or more, and,  in September I will return and put my paintings up. I tried one  temporarily, the big Green Devil, and he looked well as far as one can  judge, from the scaffolding which is on the level of the cornice. The  whole architectural and ornamental scheme seems to work out on the  large scale, and it has been a great satisfaction not to have to make any  changes. Whether or not it is another of the palpable signs that I am  getting old, I am rather revelling in the appearance this white elephant  of mine is taking on of amounting to something, after all these years.  
After the heat of the last days in Boston and of the many days   railway journey across the endless plains it is delicious to be here among   crags and glaciers and pine woods. But I shall make my way further   north to the Canadian Rockies, where the scenery is grander still.   I have two pleasant companions and we take daily rides on Indian   ponies.  
For ever Yours,

John S. Sargent.

ARTILLERY ON THE MARCH

My dear Evan,

Yours was a frightfully interesting letter and gave me a better  idea of what war looks like than anything I have read. If the accursed  is still going on, which God forbid, when I get back in two or three  months, I shall feel tempted to go out and have a look at it as you  seem to think it would be permitted. But would I have the nerve to  look, not to speak of painting ? I have never seen anything the least  horrible — outside of my studio.  
I am back from the Rocky Mountains — I think I wrote you from  there snowed up in a tent — that was the condition of things most of the  time — now I am winding up my Library and the scaffolding will soon  come down. I have taken a studio for a month or more to do various  mugs in charcoal and one paughtrait and then I will be thinking of  returning — If I could, I would do so now, for my sisters must be  
dreadfully anxious. ... ,

Yours. ever,

John S. Sargent.

* Allusion to a phrase in Defoe: "Victory attended him like a page of honour."

The compass of this Memoir does not admit a detailed  consideration of Sargent's decorative work. In any case it  would require a treatise by an expert. A full description of it  is to be found in the Guide to the Boston Library and the  publications of the Museum of Fine Arts, to which is added  a general description by Mr. Thomas A. Fox, the architect and  friend of Sargent, who gave him loyal assistance in the structural  part of the work.  

Note

In the Rotunda alone, Sargent designed and carried out four compositions  in pedimented frames, four reliefs above the pedimented frames, "Fame," "Satyr  and Maenad," "Arion," and "Achilles and Chiron"; above these again, in circular  frames, four paintings, "Ganymede," "Music," "Astronomy," "Prometheus";  and on the left and right, and at the two ends of the elliptical Rotunda, four large  compositions, "Apollo and the Muses," figures representing the Arts, "Classic  Romantic Art," "The Sphinx" and "The Chimaera," with four smaller reliefs  surmounting the frames of the circular paintings. Mr. Fox states that "all the  modelling, not only of the compositions themselves, but the details as well as all  the painting of the canvases, was actually done by the artist himself, without the  usual and supplementary aid of assistants." His decorations over the Main Stair-  way and Library of the Museum of Fine Arts, including six reliefs, comprised eighteen  separate works, two of them canvases of 25 by 10 feet. The whole scheme was  begun in November, 1916, and completed before the artist's death in April, 1925.  The subjects are classical and mythological. A golden ochre or biscuit colour  
predominates in the painting of the figures, against a back-ground of blue, both in  the Rotunda and over the Main Stairway. A number of the paintings were done  in Fulham Road. The most successful individual work is, perhaps, the half-circular  lunette of the Danaides. The subject has been simply treated; on one side of the  canvas the Danaides are seen ascending the steps with laden urns to pour water  into the amphora placed in the centre of the picture, on the other side they descend,  bearing their urns lightened of their load. The design has the repose looked for in  mural decoration. The composition is superior to that of the less balanced and  less harmonious canvases of "The Winds," "Orestes" and "Hercules and the  Hydra." Tranquillity has been attained by the succession of vertical lines provided  by the drapery of the slow-moving figures. Indeed, subject to such reservations that  a generalization of the kind requires, it is true to say that from Madame Gautreau to  the Danaides, Sargent becomes rhythmic and delicate in his lines in proportion as  he approaches the vertical. In other words, his vertical have a quality less often  found in his transverse and horizontal lines. The recumbent figures in "Atlas and  the Hesperides" at once occur to the mind as an exception to the general statement,  and there must of course be others in the vast range of his work; but the balance of  examples will be found to favour the view here expressed.  
In both sets of decorations, Library and Museum, Sargent has worked out his  scheme in his own way, free of definite influence. It is possible to suggest traces of  Flaxman in "Apollo in His Chariot," of Baudry in "Phaethon and Chiron,"  Tiepolo in "The Winds," Michael Angelo in the figure of "Philosophy," and even  Raphael in the "Unveiling of Truth"; but such ascription is at best fanciful. Sargent  owed little to any recognizable influence, closely as he had studied the decorative  work of the Masters named above.  
Of his two series of decorative schemes, that of the Boston Library is generally  considered the finer. The working out of a single theme seems to have been responsible for a higher level of excellence. The interrelation of the paintings h..  to a more harmonious effect. In quality and treatment the panels are more akin.  Here the realism of his art has seldom interfered with the abstract character of the  scheme. Only in the frieze of the prophets is its pronounced. There it has deter-  mined the spirit and disposition of the figures. On the other hand, the painting of  Ancilla Domini, or Madonna and Child, has attained a degree of simplicity and  spiritual charm that may be looked for in vain elsewhere in modern art. As he  progressed, the inspiration of his subject seems to have acquired a stronger hold  on his imagination. As he traced the ascent from the materialism and superstition  of the beginnings of religious thought to a region of pure spirituality, he was able  to express the full value of the contrast, with the poetry and distinction of a fine  intellectual conception and the skill of his craftsmanship.  
One alone among his paintings in the Library gave rise to religious dissension.  The Jews, conceiving that in his panel of the Synagogue he had reflected on the  vitality of their faith by depicting the Synagogue as abased, in contrast to the Church  triumphant in a neighbouring panel, endeavoured to obtain a decree ordering the  removal of the painting. An Act was passed in the State Legislature in 1922  authorizing by a manifest quibble the seizure of the picture "by right of eminent  domain for educational purposes in teaching art or the history of art." The pretext  was too flimsy, the purpose too transparent. The Attorney General advised  that the Act was unconstitutional and in 1924 it was repealed.* In October, 1921,  Sargent wrote to me as follows:  
"I enclose a snapshot of the President of Ireland in corroboration of 'Politics.'!

"I am in hot water here with the Jews, who resent my 'Synagogue,' and want to  have it removed — and to-morrow a prominent member of the Jewish colony is  coming to bully me about it and ask me to explain myself — I can only refer him to  Rheims, Notre Dame, Strasburg, and other Cathedrals, and dwell at length on the  good old times. Fortunately the Library Trustees do not object, and propose to  allow this painful work to stay."  
* For this, as for much other information from America, I am indebted to Mr. Richard  Hale of Boston,  

Chapter XXVI

ON March 29, 1918, Sargent's niece Rose Marie, daughter  of Mrs. Ormond and widow of Robert Andre Michel  who had fallen while fighting on October 13, 19 14, was  killed in Paris. She was attending the Good Friday service in  the church of St. Gervais. The priest had just spoken the words  "Mon Pere je remets mon esprit entre Vos mains," when a  German shell struck the building, killing seventy people, among  whom was Madame Michel. She was a person of singular  loveliness and charm, and had figured in many of Sargent's works,  notably in Cashmere, The Pink Dress and The Brook. He  made many studies of her hands, which he thought the most  beautiful he had ever seen, and gave two casts of them to the  Slade. She had travelled with him on some of his sketching  tours, and her youth and high spirits and the beauty of her  character had won his devotion. Her death made a deep impression on him. 
Several attempts were made to induce Sargent to visit France  and paint during the War. In June, 191 8, he consented, and  towards the end of that month he and Professor Tonks left  England. He regarded the question of his outfit very seriously,  and 31, Tite Street soon became littered with boots, belts and  khaki. There was a succession of tryings on, an endless packing and unpacking; buckles suddenly came to play a part in  the scheme of things, straps to act with "the silent inclemency  of inanimate objects going their own way." At Charing Cross  on the day of departure his personal equipment showed traces  of difficulties partially overcome. Little as he looked like an  artist, he looked even less like a military unit returning from  leave. Bearded, and with a touch of the seafarer's complexion  and with his burly figure, he appeared to a "Tommy" as "a  sailor gone wrong." He was excited and interested. On arrival at Boulogne he went to G.H.Q. as the guest of Field-Marshal  Haig; he was received with a welcome he never forgot, and found  his friend Sir Philip Sassoon to initiate him into the mysteries  of the military hierarchy.  
After a few days at G.H.Q. he motored to the headquarters  of Major-General Sir Geoffrey Feilding, commanding the  Guards Division, then at Bavincourt, twenty-five miles south  of Arras.  
When the Division went into the line again on July 13 he  followed General Feilding's headquarters, which were then about  five miles from Berles au Bois. Sargent occupied one of the  iron huts which had been built into a high bank to avoid observation and bombs. On the 16th he was joined by Professor Tonks.  General Feilding writes: "Sargent messed with us: we were a  mess of about fourteen with him and Tonks. Breakfast and  luncheon depended as to time on our various jobs, each of us  coming in as he could get away. At dinner we were all together.  He was a delightful companion, and we all loved him. He used  to talk the whole time, and there was always some competition  to sit next to him. He took an enormous interest in everything  going on, he discussed music, painting and every imaginable  subject."  

Professor Tonks writes:

Sargent entered completely into the spirit of his surroundings.  I don't think he ever grasped much about the military campaign in  actual being, which is curious as he had in his library and had read  with deep interest many books on the Napoleon campaigns. I could  never make him understand differences of rank, no not the most obvious,  so I gave up trying. Things which seemed the commonplaces of  war surprised him as when he said to General Feilding one Sunday  when the Band was playing "I suppose there is no fighting on Sun-  days/' Sometimes I used to wonder if he knew how dangerous a  shell might be, as he never showed the least sign of fear, he was merely  annoyed if they burst sufficiently near to shake him. Whenever he  was at work a little crowd would collect and they easily found him  as he invariably worked under a large white umbrella, which the  British did not mind in the least but which the Americans (for he  joined them later) with the thoroughness of the new broom made him camouflage. From Ballymont we went to Arras where Colonel  Hastings the Town Commandant found us quarters in about the best  uninjured house in the place. Here we had two or three weeks together. He did a somewhat elaborate oil painting of the ruined  Cathedral and a great many water colours of surprising skill. I never  could persuade him to work in the evening when the ruined town  looked so enchanting ; he worked systematically morning and afternoon.  One day we heard that the Guards Division were advancing so we  motored towards them to find material for our subjects. We knew  that a number of gassed men were being taken to a dressing station  on the Doullens Road, so we went there in the evening. He immediately began making sketches and a little later asked me if I would mind  his making this essentially medical subject his, and I told him I did not  in the least mind. He worked hard and made a number of pencil  and pen sketches which formed the basis of the oil painting known  as Gassed now in the War Museum. It is a good representation  of what we saw, as it gives a sense of the surrounding peace. I regret  he did not put in something I noticed, a French boy and girl of about  8 years, who watched the procession of men with a certain calm philosophy for an hour or more, it made a strange contrast. 

On July 24 Sargent wrote:

C/o Major Lee,

G.H.Q.,

 Thursday 24M.

My dear Evan,

I got a kind note from General Elles, thanks to you, giving me   the freedom of the Tanks, but I am already here with the Guards   Division and rather far away South Eastwards. I had had a lively   day there before, in General Elles' absence, when Major Uzzielli took   Philip Sassoon and me a joy ride in a Tank up and down slopes, and   over trenches and looping the loop generally. There is a row of   obsolete ones somewhere about Bermicourt that made me think of   the ships before Troy.  
I am delightfully quartered here (in an iron tube) with General   Feilding who is awfully kind and nice — and there is some good company   in the Mess, and many pleasant fellows within reach — Lord Lascelles,   Capt. Spencer Churchill whose occupation is crawling up to the Boche  
lines across No Mans Land. He carries in his pocket as a mascotte a   little bronze greek head of 600 b.c. and General Haldane* who insisted   on putting six volumes of Marion Crawford into my motor, with the order in which I must read them. He was scandalized at my never  having read anything of that author excepting the line "and the silence  clashed against the stillness," when certain lovers met by moonlight  in the Pantheon.  
Whereas — I meant to be interesting — and ii y a de quoi.  
I will write again — God bless you. Y

John S. Sargent.

* Lieuteneral Sir Aylmer Haldane, commanding 6th Corps. 

ARRAS

The subject which Sargent had been specially invited to paint  was a scene illustrating the co-operation of British and American  troops. It will be remembered that American troops took  their place for the first time in the main battle-line on May 28,  1918, in the Mondidier section. On that day General Bullard's  1st American Division, forming part of the French First Army,  had captured the village of Cantigny and held it against three  strong counter-attacks. By the middle of July 300,000 American  troops were either in the line or in reserve. Sargent's visit  coincided, therefore, with the principal American activities  in the field. He was in France when Ludendorff made his final  attack on July 15, and when on July 18 Foch began his counter-  stroke. But the subject with which he was directly con-  cerned, "British and American troops acting together," was not  easy to capture. There was the difficulty, first, of finding the  occasion, and then of its not being paintable when found. It  was not until the end of September that he witnessed a scene  which he thought suitable and of which he did a study, Arrival  of American Troops at the Front \ France, 191 8.*  
On September 11 he wrote:

C/o Major Lee,

G.H.Q.,

Sept. n, 1918.

My dear Evan,

I wonder if you are coming out to the Tanks — If so I hope   we can meet before I go back to London. The time is drawing nearer   although there are two or three weeks yet as I needn't consider my   privilege here at an end until the end of September. The weather   * The property of Miss J. H. Heyneman. is breaking and rain and mud have set in for good I fear, and I hate  to consider my campaign over before my harvest of sketches has grown  to something more presentable in quality and quantity. The programme of "British and American troops working together," has sat  heavily upon me for though historically and sentimentally the thing  happens, the naked eye cannot catch it in the act, nor have I, so far,  forged the Vulcan's net in which the act can be imprisoned and gaily  looked upon. How can there be anything flagrant enough for a  picture when Mars and Venus are miles apart whether in camps or  front trenches. And the farther forward one goes the more scattered  and meagre everything is. The nearer to danger the fewer and the  more hidden the men — the more dramatic the situation the more it  becomes an empty landscape. The Ministry of Information expects  an epic — and how can one do an epic without masses of men ? Excepting at night I have only seen three fine subjects with masses of  men — one a harrowing sight, a field full of gassed and blindfolded  men — another a train of trucks packed with "chair a cannon" — and  another frequent sight a big road encumbered with troops and traffic,  I daresay the latter, combining English and Americans, is the best  thing to do, if it can be prevented from looking like going to the  Derby. 
I left Tonks at Arras and came on to this neighbourhood of Ypres,  to an American Division and am now with some R.G.A. but will  probably go to Cassel where the hotel is still open. It is delightful  not to have to dodge behind hedges when you are on Kemmel — not to  speak of other sources of satisfaction, at the events of the last month !  What a pity winter is setting in when everything is going so well.  
I hardly deserve a letter, having written so rarely, but I want to  know whether there is a chance of our meeting over here. Philip  Sassoon has been awfully kind and useful.  
Yrs. ever,

John S. Sargent.

The scene which he witnessed with Professor Tonks, and  chose as the subject for his war picture Gassed, followed  the attack of the 4th and 6th Corps on August 21. The 6th  Corps had attacked astride of Ayette with the 99th Brigade* of  the 2nd Division on the right and the 2nd Guards Brigade on  the left. The Germans put down a gas-shell barrage, which failed  to stop the advance. Later in the day the heat of the sun set the gas in movement, and the 99th Brigade and the 8th Brigade  of the 3rd Division, which passed through them to capture  Courcelles, were caught in it. It is the men of these units that  appear in the picture. When the picture was finished Sargent  was in doubt what to call it.  

* Ninety-ninth Brigade was made up of 24rd Royal Fusiliers, a battalion of the  Royal Berkshire and the 6oth Rifles.  

I don't (he wrote) quite agree with your objections to the title  "gassed." The place is merely a clearing station that they were  brought to — the date would lead people to speculate as to what  regiments were reduced to that pitiable condition, and I think their  identity had better not be indicated. The word "gassed" is ugly,  which is my own objection, but I don't feel it to be melodramatic  only very prosaic and matter of fact.  
I have just come from the Canadian Exhibition, where there is a  hideous post-impressionist picture, of which mine cannot be accused  of being a crib. Augustus John has a canvas forty feet long done in his  free and script style, but without beauty of composition. I was afraid  I should be depressed by seeing something in it that would make me  feel that my picture is conventional, academic and boring — Whereas.  
Incidents of the War were not favourable for the production  of works of art. The declared purpose with which pictures were  painted implied that their first concern was documentary.  Artists were sent to France to illustrate what took place, and  provide on canvas a record for posterity of the scenes enacted.  The incident which Sargent has chosen for his subject does,  it is true, carry a great deal of sentimental significance. He  has shown some of the horror of War, much of the moral quality  of those taking part in it, and has interpreted the emotional  intensity of a scene calculated to rouse compassion in the onlooker. The maimed and broken march of a file of men, blind-  fold and striving in their stricken state to follow the directions  of a guiding hand, has been treated with impressive simplicity.  It is executed in low relief; with the severity of a processional  frieze. There is no striving after the picturesque; dramatic  account has been entirely dispensed with. It is stated in its  starkest terms, it is more than merely descriptive. He has given  a spiritual value to realism, and dignity and solemnity to the  facts. The desultory rhythm of the figures silhouetted against the sky, the diffused light of evening, the harmony of colour with  which the scene is invested, have entered into the inspiration.  
On September 24 he arrived at a camp in the neighbour-  hood of Peronne. Near by was the Fourth Army Prisoners of War  Transit Cage, under the command of Captain H. J. E. Anstruther,  26th Royal Welsh Fusiliers, whose guest Sargent became. "I  suggested to Sargent," writes Captain Anstruther, "that he  might like to look round the prisoners of war cage and see the  various types of prisoners taken on the previous day. The ground  was ankle-deep in mud after heavy rain and the constant churning up by prisoners marching in and out and up and down —  some hundreds of prisoners were standing about. Sargent was  deeply interested in the scene as he stood in the centre of the  cage, the largest in the Army area (100 yards square), making  notes and criticisms of the men and studying the various  types." It is easy to imagine Sargent feeling at first embarrassed  — was it quite fair ? Was it not taking advantage of fellow-men  in adversity studying them in a pen and sizing them up like  cattle? — then the "queerness" of it getting the better of  his hesitations and stimulating his vision, and finally his being  caught up by the absorbing interest of the scene. After all, the  prisoners themselves were indifferent to inspection: positively  one can imagine him arguing to himself there wasn't any reason  not to stare and take notes. A day or two later he was struck  down by influenza and taken to the 41st Casualty Clearing  Station near Roisel, where he was placed under the care of  Doctor Stobie of Oxford. He was a week in bed, "in a  hospital tent," as he wrote to Mrs. Gardner, "with the accompaniment of groans of wounded, and the chokings and coughing  of gassed men, which was a nightmare — it always seemed strange  on opening one's eyes to see the level cots and the dimly-lit long  tent looking so calm, when one was dozing in pandemonium."  He was placed in the officers' ward, warmed by an oil stove, the  tent very wet and muddy, the conditions uncomfortable, men  dying round him, and the aftermath of the battlefield constantly  passing before him. He read a lot of the hospital books and  made a sketch of one of the flaps of the tent. He was quite uninterested in military matters, but when well enough to join  the doctors' mess he proved a great asset, and made an admirable social element — everybody liked him. It was his habit  to regard the hazards of mortality with outward calm; his  compassion, though deep, was concealed by shyness; his eye  might kindle with sympathy, his voice change when confronted  with suffering, but he shunned expression of deep feeling. And  so, too, in France, faced with sights to which he was acutely  sensitive, and suffering in its most poignant form, he continued  to maintain his habitual reserve. By sheer necessity it was the  attitude of those most concerned; it was doubly incumbent on  those taking no active part, but thrust into this tortured world,  to maintain the same reticence and acceptance.  
By the end of October he was back in England. Soon after  the Armistice Sir Abe Bailey, with fine generosity, offered to  pay for three pictures for the National Portrait Gallery, which  should include the foremost figures, political, naval and military,  of the War. Naturally Sargent was approached as to his willing-  ness to undertake one of the three. At first he declined. Great  pressure was put upon him, and in January, 19 19, he wrote:  " Yes, I have written to Lord Dillon* and said that if the Trustees  should ask me again, leaving me liberty of time, I would gladly  do the Army group — gladly is polite.'* When consulted, he  recommended that Sir James Guthrie and Sir Arthur Cope, R.A.,  should be asked to execute the other two groups. Each painter  was to receive £5,000. Nothing but a sense of obligation  induced Sargent to embark on this undertaking. It never  appealed to him; it had to be fitted in with his work at Boston;  from the first he presaged a failure.  
In May he wrote from America:

May 12, 1920.

My dear Evan,

I am beginning to see my way clear to getting back to England  in fact I am in hopes of getting a cabin on the 3rd July. . . . The  Generals loom before me like a nightmare. I curse God and man for  having weakly said I would do them, for I have no ideas about it and  I foresee a horrible failure. My new England conscience alone forbids my {illegible) the very real possibility of my not being able to get a  ship or striking a floating mine if I do. However it will certainly  be a pleasure to be in London again and to see the half a dozen people  whom I have missed during this year's absence.  

* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery.

.... Haven't you been delighted with Henry James' letters ?  such virtuosity, such beautiful flutters — it is like watching the evolutions of a bird of paradise in a tropical jungle. There is a letter about  Roosevelt in the second volume and one to Walter Berry which are  
miraculous fireworks.  
Yours

John S. Sargent.

P.S. — I wonder if Guthrie and Cope are getting a tremendous   start of me on the accursed.  
In July he was once more in Tite Street. In September he  wrote, again in reference to his picture of the Generals, to Sir  James Guthrie:  
I have been back a couple of months and thanks to Mr. Milner*  have put salt on the tails of a certain number of generals and I find  each of them individually very interesting to do and the tremendous  variety of types seems to give a promise of some sort of interest. But  I am still merely collecting material and have not yet evolved any  scheme of the picture as a whole. I am handicapped by the idea that  they never could have been altogether in any particular place — so I  feel debarred from any sort of interesting background and reduced  to painting them all standing up in a vacuum.  
High hopes were entertained of what Sargent would produce.  Unfortunately he refused to allow himself any poetic licence.  These soldiers never had been in one room together during the  War, therefore it would be a falsification to group them as  though they had. His adherence to fact stood between him  and a work of art. The background, in his view, had to be  neutral, carrying no import of time or place. The Generals  had, as he said, to be painted in a vacuum. The result is a  group devoid of artistic interest. The Generals appear to be  collected on a stage from which the curtain has just risen, and  about to advance as a chorus to the footlights, a view borne out  by the playhouse architecture of the background. Individual  
* Director of the National Portrait Gallery.

heads are finely painted; but as a composition it has failed. The  arrangement is forced and rigid and wanting in poise. It was  probably beyond the skill of man to avoid a tendency to monotony  in representing a sequence of brown boots and spurs; some artifice,  at least, of lighting was required, but this has not been given.  The spectator is confronted with seventeen gentlemen in khaki  looking out of the picture, and gathered together for no conceivable purpose other than to stand for their portraits. On the  other hand, as a series of literal resemblances of those who led  British armies to victory it provides a veracious record, and this,  when all is said and done, was the object when the commission  was given.  
With the exception of his picture Gassed, the war as such  cannot be said to have influenced favourably Sargent's art. It  is true that he painted some fine water-colours in France, but in  these the war plays a small part; they are just scenes he might  have chosen on any one of his sketching holidays, with here  and there indications of military occurrences incidental to the  setting. In the same way his commemorative panels painted for  Harvard University are lacking in any quality of inspiration.  

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