JOHN SARGENT'S ART STUDIO

Sargent's Life through his writing, paintings and drawings

Chapter XIX

I MET Sargent for the first time in May, 1894, at a party  given by Mrs. Henry White at Loseley. I have found a  record of my first impression in a letter written at the time.  After giving a list of the party it runs: "Also Sargent, who is  interesting round and about his own subject, though he talks  slower and with more difficulty in finding words than anyone I  ever met. When he can't finish a sentence he waves his fingers  before his face as a sort of signal for the conversation to go on  without him — at least, that is the impression I came to after  staying in the house with him." That impression was modified  as time went on, though he always talked slowly. He gave the  idea of one grasping at words which danced elusively in his brain;  his conversation was never fluent, but, like his painting, it could  be immensely descriptive. He wasted no words — it may even be  doubted if he had any to waste — but those he used were like  strokes of his brush, significant and suggestive; indeed, he could  convey a weight of meaning by a gesture or a truncated phrase.  He could transpose scenes and experiences into words with more  character and tang in his rendering than many more accomplished  masters of phrase. When he talked of matters relating to art,  or when he was with intimates, he found words with comparative  ease. Even then there was hesitation, as though he was at his  easel determining the next stroke of his brush. But his hesitation  was itself often expressive and in any case so characteristic that  certainly no friend of his would have had it otherwise. So much  lay at the back of it: such authority, such anxious sincerity, and  at the same time, so much humour and finesse. No man had  more entirely home-made opinions, opinions so wholly the  unadulterated product of his own reflection or experience. His  wit was true and direct, free of paradox, an overflow of his  personality. He resembled Henry James, in that nothing would  induce him to make a speech. More than once at a dinner in  early days the shouts of the diners got him to his feet, when  he would stand struggling with his nervousness, apparently  unable to utter. On one occasion blurting out, "It's a damned  shame," he subsided into his seat amid a tempest of applause.  

In the nineties he moved about in the world of London more  than in subsequent years, dining out frequently. And neither  then nor later did he consider that his fame exempted him from  making social efforts. His courtesy never failed. But he was  undoubtedly fastidious; and by no means were all people grist  to his mill. Later he became more reluctant to dine out, and in  his last years he narrowed his social ambit to very small dimensions. Even so, a considerable portion of the large correspondence he conscientiously transacted consisted of refusals to  invitations. Evenings with music were those to which his tastes  most inclined him. One such is described by Miss Heyneman,  who writes:  

In 1809 I was back again in London. My sister had a house at  39, Palace Court which Mr. Sargent called "The Great Good Place"  a reference to Henry James' short story of that name. It had a large  music room and he enjoyed evenings of music there, with two or three  other people. I recall one occasion which could hardly be called  quiet. It was a very hot night in July and Madame Blanche Marchesi  and Denis O'Sullivan worked through the whole of Tristan, taking all  the parts — tenor — bass — baritone — contralto or soprano in turn, even  singing the chorus parts together. The windows were wide open and  a great crowd collected outside, for both Madame Marchesi and Denis  O'Sullivan were plainly visible, and both in wild spirits accompanied  their singing by very dramatic gestures. Mr. O'Sullivan had taken  off his coat and was wearing a Japanese kimono, Blanche Marchesi was  of course in evening dress, but Mr. Sargent had not succumbed to  the temptation of divesting himself of anything. They were all too  absorbed to be conscious of heat, or any other discomfort, but when  they had come to the end, the unhappy pianist rose with his shirt and  collar wilted and feeling and looking as he expressed it like "claret  frappe." None the less he wrote the next day "What a good time  we had last night."  

He was a great playgoer and as ready to be entertained by a  "revue" as by serious drama or the Russian ballet. His musical gifts have been mentioned, and the question is often asked, "What  did they amount to?" Joachim is credited with the remark  that "had Sargent taken to music instead of painting he would  have been as great a musician as he was a painter." Two eminent  living musicians, however, have kindly contributed their views  on this aspect of his genius.

John Sargent sketching in the alps.

Mr. Loeffler writes:  
Meadowmere Farm,

Medfield,

Massachusetts,

Dear Sir, January 3

In answer to your question about Sargent's "musicalness"  permit me to jot down in a loose way the various impressions I received  of this in the course of many years of my enjoying the privilege of his  delightful and generous friendship. I met Mr. Sargent some 35  years ago after a Symphony Concert in Boston where I had played  Lalo's "Symphonie Espagnole," a delightful work of which Sargent  was very fond. He came to the Artists room that evening and with  that irresistible charm of his said a few words which made one rise  in one's self esteem and then arranged for our meeting a few days later  at dinner in a mutual friends house. On this delightful occasion  Sargent played with me "en petit Comite" the Symphonie Espagnole  in which he revealed himself as the admirable musician which he  innately was. He was quite amazing in accompanying The 3rd  Movement ("Intermede") a quite splendid piece of music with  rather complicated rhythms in time, which he played with complete  musical and rhythmical understanding, verve and spirit. In his  luminously intelligent manner he spoke of the various characteristics  of Spanish rhythms in music, quite in the manner in which M. Edouard  Lalo had expounded these intricacies to me in prior years. That same  evening we also played the first Sonata by Gabriel Faure for whose  music Sargent had a strong predilection which I ever sincerely shared.  Sargent had the insinuating and consummate art of initiating music  lovers and musicians as well, to the hidden charms, harmonic innovations and the felicitous melodic lessons ( ?) in the works of this unassuming composer of genius. To come back once more to our playing  Faure's perplexingly "Swift" Sonata, Sargent sailed through his part  in those early days. Not by any means that he always played all the  notes, but better than that, when cornered by a surprise difficulty,  he revealed his genuine talent for music by playing all that which was  and is most essential. In other words he was in music as in all things "frightfully" intelligent, not merely glib or clever. He knew Wagner's  scores much more intimately than many musicians and in bygone  years played through the better part of them with complete comprehension, deep interest and genuine love for all the beauties in them.  He discriminated amazingly well. Of Richard Strauss he said: "He  is often discouragingly common place, but he has a virility of saying  things which is unusual and convincing, often quite in the grand  manner." What he liked in Strauss' works was "the organic power,  the structural design. The 'charpente,' is there; one feels the lungs,  the heart, the liver, all are functioning!" Of Debussy's works he  liked best, "The afternoon of a faune," and many of his Piano  pieces. Strange to say "Pellias and Melisande" he thought rather  "anaemic." On the whole he did not care much for "Le precieux"  in any art. His ear was strangely sensitive for unusual harmonic  progressions, in fact he had an unusually fine memory for them. I  have known him to be haunted by certain ones, after one hearing he  would not rest there until he had solved the harmonic riddle. Without  the music, he would do this at the Piano by sheer tenacity of oral  memory. His musical training must have been from the start unusually good, for I have heard him solfegise like a musician difficult passages,  that he had not played well at first sight reading. His unusually  great intelligence helped him in music as in everything else that he  ever undertook. In the latter years S. had somewhat lost his cunning  in playing the Piano. This was due no doubt to lack of practice and  his failing eyesight, by which I mean that glasses interfered much with  his sense of accommodation while playing. I do not know whether  Sargent ever tried himself in musical composition yet there is no doubt  in my mind, that had he chosen to become a musician he would have  risen to eminence in our art in one way or another.  

It is unusual to meet so marvellously endowed a man possessing  such simplicity of manner, such goodness of heart, such genuine human  kindness in his nature. He had the innate bearing and dignity  of a noble man. His life was to my mind the fullest imaginable, for  he was ever alert, in his joy over the petal of a flower, over a feather of  a small bird, the mystery of the propelling power of a little snake in the  grass. He knew a great deal about natural history. He knew a great  deal because he usually remembered everything he had read. He  was the most voracious and discriminating reader I have ever met.  He belied the French saying "Pour devenir un grand artiste il faut  etre, il faut rester fruste." Fruste de connaisances they meant, i. e.  not know too many things, not know too much. He just was a glorious  exception as genius always is, and just could not help being almost  omniscient with so exceptional a memory as was his. To have known so great, so lovable, so delightful ;i man has been one of the greatest  privileges of my life. To have appreciated the honor of enjoying also  his friendship may explain to you the profound affection in which 
I hold today his memory. v . .

 Yours sincerely,

C. M. LOEFFLER.

THE STUDIO, 31 TITE STREET

Mr. Percy Grainger has also been good enough to send me his impressions. 
May 6th  1926.

Sargent's Contributions to Music.

John Singer Sargent was one of the most outstanding musicians  I have ever met; for although his musical technic was not as developed  as his painting technic, he had that rarest of all aesthetic gifts — individualistic, balanced, critical judgment. His musical judgments,  sympathies and activities welled up instinctively out of his rich musical  inner nature, and were not (as are the musical doings of many a gifted  amateur musician) influenced by the opinions of professional musicians,  or indeed by any ascertainable outside factors whatever. To hear  Sargent play the piano was indeed a treat, for his pianism had the  manliness and richness of his painting, though, naturally, it lacked that  polished skillfulness that comes only with many-hourly daily practice  spread over many years. He delighted especially in playing his  favourite, Faure, and in struggling with the fantastic difficulties of  Albeniz's "Iberia," which latter he had mastered to the point of  making it a musical joy to listen to under his hands; a task that might  stagger many a well-equipped concert pianist.  

However, remarkable as his playing was, intense as his delight in  active music-making was, I consider his greatest contribution to music  lay in the wondrously beneficent influence he exerted on musical life  in England. It is probable that he exerted this same influence in  other lands, but I happened to witness it in England only.  

In the benevolent paternal quality of his musical influence, Sargent  was not only the ideal artist, but also the ideal American; for there is  probably no people, today, that bring such a beautiful reverence  and generosity to the support of music as do the Americans — possibly  a modern manifestation of their original Puritan background. Sargent  always seemed to me a typical Puritan, a typical New-Englander in  his musical life. Music seemed to be less a recreation to him than  a sacred duty, the duty of aiding especial musical talent wherever he  found it. While he was nowise deaf to the appeal of the gifts of  reproductive musicians, it was primarily the creative musicians (composers) to whom he was most powerfully drawn, and whom he aided  most extensively. Out of those many musicians for whom the warmth  of his musical enthusiasm was especially kindled, I recall particularly  the following ones: Gabriel Faure, Charles Martin Loeffler, Ethel  Smyth, Korbay, Leon Delafosse, Debussy, Cyril Scott, Albeniz and  myself.  
Sargent was not content to enjoy his musical enthusiasms as merely  personal pleasures; he never rested until his enthusiasms had taken  practical tangible shapes beneficial to the musicians that had aroused  them, and to the art of music in general. For many years (longer than  I knew him) he had been the apostle of Gabriel Faure in England,  bringing over that great composer to London for public and private  performances of his compositions, arranging performances of Faure's  works by the Cappe Quartet, Leon Delafosse, and other exquisite  artists and the like. In my opinion Sargent is chiefly responsible  for the fine understanding of Faure's music that obtains in England.  He was likewise one of the first (if not the very first) to proclaim the  beauty and the importance of Loefner's muse.  
Sargent used his great prestige as a unique social as well as artistic  "lion" in London, to benefit those musicians he considered worthy of  help and fame. He had only to announce his approval of any musician  for hostesses to spring up ready to engage these proteges, hoping that  the performance of these musicians at their "At Homes" would  guarantee them Sargent's coveted presence — which it usually did,  for Sargent was untiring and self-effacing in all that pertained to the  support of those he considered true artists. To have Sargent's approval  and support was a wonderful boon to any struggling artist; highly  beneficial from a practical, mundane standpoint, and deeply comforting  on purely artistic grounds — for Sargent's musical mind worked like  a composer's rather than like a mere music-lover's.  

The things he especially enjoyed in music, the things he emphasized  in his musical comments, the details his musical memory retained, were  all highly specialized points, rare sparks of genius, high-lights of original  workmanship that the average musician (professional or amateur)  usually misses entirely, and that, as a rule, only great composers can  be expected to appreciate consciously. But even great composers  are seldom as balanced, as fair, as clear-eyed in their musical criticisms  as Sargent was and I repeat what I asserted earlier — that esthetical  judgment such as his is the rarest of all musical gifts.  

The fact that he bestowed upon the music of Gabriel Faure, the  greatest depth and intensity of his musical admiration and devotion  is a convincing example of the rightness of Sargent's artistic vision,  of his ability to penetrate to musical essentials, of his unsusceptibility to shallow surface appeals, of his freedom from the "isms" and vogues  of his day. For Faure is one of those quietly great masters (like Bach,  Cesar Franck and Frederick Delius) who, in the main, work hidden  from the outer world of their own era, to emerge undyingly resplendant  to future generations. But Sargent had in all musical matters the  magically penetrating eye of genius. In addition he had the comforting touch of a warmly human heart, of a compassionate seer — which,  by the way, explains to me, his natural sympathy with such a subject  as that so illuminatingly disclosed in his painting The Hermit. 
In all the years in which I was privileged to know him, and on all  the many, many occasions on which I was made happy in meeting him,  I never discovered in Sargent one act, one thought, one gesture, one  opinion, judgment or sympathy that did not proclaim the true genius,  the great man, the innate aristocrat. Few men were funnier than  he, consciously or unconsciously. Probably his artistic dislikes were  as strong as his likings but his disapprovals were buried in obscure  grunts, in indecipherably broken sentences, while his approvals were  always clearly and unmistakably conveyed ; for he was, above all things,  a constructive personality, and never oblivious to the actual effect of  all he did and said. Two things stand out in my memory of him —  his unfailing benevolence where the welfare of art was concerned,  and his inscrutability in all that touched his purely personal life. He  was strong in all things; always giving sympathy, never evoking it,  always helpful to others, and always self-contained — a strange mixture  of a compassionate Christian and a stoical Red Indian Warrior !  

I cannot close this short account of my impressions of Sargent  without mentioning what I, in my innermost artist's heart, owe  esthetically to him and his friend, William Gare Rathbone. These two,  both so individualistic and uninfluenceable in their musical perceptions,  were yet united in many musical sympathies and enthusiasms. They  were alike in this — that they were the finest musical amateurs that I,  personally, have ever seen; that their musicality was essentially that  of the composer type, that their natural attitude towards music and  musicians was constructive and benevolent. Some of my years in  London were, artistically speaking, dreary and hopeless enough. But  into the darkness of those times, Sargent and Rathbone unfailingly  shed light. To meet either of them, anywhere, was to drink a great  draught of artistic and human encouragement, to feel enboldened  towards further compositional experimentation, to sense an intuitive  championing of all artistic genuineness and originality. For all these  nobilities, which were revealed to me in moments when I was poor  and desperate enough to measure their true and rare value, I shall be  unforgettingly thankful as long as I have my memory.  

The layman who reads these appreciations of Mr. Loeffler  and Mr. Grainger will probably conclude that Joachim was not  exaggerating when he spoke of Sargent as a musician. As such,  Sargent entertained a deep admiration for the musical gifts  of Ethel Smyth. Her singing found in him an enchanted listener,  and it is in the act of singing that the drew her. Before that he  had been asked to paint her. In reference to the request he  wrote: "Brewster, for some time, has wanted me to do a head of  her, a painting, and they say he wants her in a calm mood. Miss  Smyth in a calm mood ! It reminds me of Mr. Dooley's description of a fiery American general: after describing his tremendous  and furious rages he says: 'He was a man who could be calm  when there was anything to be calm about. ' "  

Chapter XX

AMONG the pictures which Sargent exhibited at the  Academy in 1895 were two portraits of Coventry Pat-  JL  more. One of these is now in the National Portrait  Gallery; the other, a sketch of the poet's head, is one of Sargent's  most brilliant achievements; as in more than one of his successful  portraits the head is in profile. The sketch is not by any means  the Patmore of The Angel in the House, but the Patmore of  whom Sir Edmund Gosse* wrote: "Defiance was not a burden  to him; he was 'ever a fighter* requiring for complete mental  health the salubrious sensation of antagonism." His face is  rugged with battle, leonine with combativeness, but illuminated  with an inward and spiritual grace. It is an intimate and revealing study of character. Sir Edmund, discussing these pictures,  wrote: "It is necessary to insist that he (Patmore) was not always  thus ragged and vulturine, not always such a miraculous portent  of gnarled mandible and shaken plumage." At the date of the  picture (September, 1894), however, Patmore was seventy-one  years of age and considerably older in appearance, a Fighting  Temeraire drawing within sight of harbour. Those who hold  that Sargent failed in the rendering of spiritual qualities, may  hesitate before this sketch. Here is old age with the fires of  youth still glowing within; the eyes undimmed by time; the  spirit victorious over the accidents of mortality. The easy and  decisive modelling of the head, the quality of the flesh scored  and thinned with age, and the truth of tone, all declare it one of  the artist's most noteworthy efforts. Before the sittings Patmore  had written of Sargent: "He seems to me to be the greatest, not  only of living English portrait painters, but of all English portrait  painters." Patmore was delighted with the sketch, and when a  friend told him that anyone might suppose that the unseen hand held a whip, and that it might have been the portrait of a Southern  planter on the point of thrashing his slaves and exclaiming,  "You damned niggers!" the poet exclaimed: "Is not that what  I have been doing all my life ? " Not content with the two  portraits, Sargent insisted on a third; that is how Patmore comes  to figure in the frieze in the Boston Library as the prophet  Ezekiel.  

* Edmund Gosse, "Coventry Patmore," p. 178.

Another portrait of the same year is that of Mr. W. W.  Graham Robertson, author of "Pinkie and the Fairies. ,, He is  painted as a slight young dandy standing on a polished floor;  the figure in the long fashionable overcoat, the jade-handled  cane, the carefully groomed poodle with a coloured ribbon tying  up its curls, and the delicate intellectual countenance of the  model, pale with weariness of thought or with dawns that have  found him bandying paradox and repartee, might be taken as a  symbol of the nineties. The picture speaks of the "Beardsley  period," of the "Yellow Book," of the aspiration to startle and  the cultivation of disillusioned detachment. Sargent has been  engrossed by the significance of the problem to be solved. He  has painted an individual, but he has defined a period, a type,  an attitude of mind; he has put on record a date. That is an  achievement to be compared with the portrait of the youth,  Johan Koeymans, painted by Hals. All the mastery of tone and  value he had acquired is displayed on the canvas and shown in  the gradations of colour that give life and beauty to the picture.  The painting is less free than in the Patmore sketch, but the  modelling of the head is no less skilful. A palette more limited  than usual has been employed. The introduction of the dandified poodle has given interest and vivacity to the picture and  adroitly provided a half-tone between the high light of face,  hands and collar and the sombre background. Other portraits  shown were Mrs. Ernest Hills and Mrs. Russell Cooke, while  at the New Gallery, he exhibited the portrait of Miss Ada  Rehan.  
At the end of 1895, finding the calls on his time in London  had grown so pressing, he determined to take another studio in  which to continue his Boston decorations. Accordingly, he  

W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON.

gave up residing at Morgan Hall with the Abbeys and took a  twenty-one years' lease of 12 and 14, The Avenue, Fulham Road.  For the rest of his life when in London the greater part of his time  was spent in the large studio, which, with an adjoining room  where he worked at the architectural part of his decorations,  comprised the new premises. They lay removed from the  thoroughfare with an unwelcoming approach through a back-  yard. Here he could withdraw from the world, like a bandit  to his fastness, and admit visitors or not as he liked. An un-  answered rap on the door was no proof that Sargent was not  within. If he answered, it was invariably in his shirt-sleeves,  generally with a cigarette in his mouth, and always with a robust  welcome. Scores of pencil studies lay about and vast canvases  were in position against the wall, and with regard to these he was  always curious to hear the views of a layman, and ready to discuss  his criticism and approval. The contents of his workshop next  door, where he worked out problems of lighting and calculations  of architectural proportion and geometrical relations, were  much more recondite; here the amateur could only display a  totally unintelligent interest. His famous picture Gassed  was painted at Fulham Road, also the Generals of the War  and the decorations of Boston. Some years later, when sated  with painting portraits, he wrote to Ralph Curtis:  

No more paughtraits* whether refreshed or not. I abhor and  abjure them and hope never to do another especially of the Upper  Classes. I have weakly compromised and lately done a lot of mugs  in coke and charcoal and am sick of that too, although occasionally  the brief operation has been painless. I am winding up my worldly  affairs in that line and now I shall be able to paint nothing but Jehovah  in Fulham Road. His friends all call Him Jah, Whereas may you  and the Dogaressa (Mrs. Ralph Curtis) and the children merit and  receive his fatherly attention and flourish under his care.  
Yrs.,
J. S. S.

It was about the same time that Sargent said to someone  who lamented that in his painting he had veiled, and not revealed,  
* He used this spelling in later years as a sort of signal of satiety.

the face of Jehovah: "You forget I have given up painting  portraits."  
One picture exhibited at the Academy in 1896 may be  especially mentioned because it elicited the warm admiration  of Mr. George Moore, who was far from being enthusiastic about  Sargent. Mr. Moore wrote of this portrait (Miss Priestley) :  
Gradually a pale-faced woman with arched eyebrows, 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  manner: it does not coule de source like the drawing of the very great  Masters.  
Thenceforward a steady stream of portraits issued from the  studio in Tite Street. Max Beerbohm's caricature reproduced  on p. 160, represents Sargent, with dilated eye and a countenance  slightly bucolic, at his window like a farmer taking stock of his  cattle, and surveying the row of applicants drawn up in the street  below. Among the fashionable ladies waiting their turn may be  seen boy messengers sent on in advance to keep places in the  ranks, where Lady Faudel Phillips and the Duchess of Sutherland  are conspicuous. One of his sitters, a famous personage, asked  if she could invite some of her friends to be present at a sitting.  He reluctantly assented. At three o'clock the door bell rang,  and during the next half-hour the friends continued to arrive,  all strangers to Sargent, most of them curiously dressed representatives of the aesthetic movement then at its height. By  three-thirty the studio was thronged with an excited concourse;  every moment the hubbub increased. By degrees he was pressed  against his easel, and the area in which he used to step back to get  a better view of his sitter was blocked. The sitting had to be  abandoned.  

In his early days when painting in Paris he used to relate  that Mrs. Moore, who was then sitting to him in her own house,  and who enjoyed a European fame for malaprop use of French,  took exception to a glass of flowers standing between her and the  painter. She rang the bell and when the footman appeared said,  pointing in the direction of Sargent, "Otez-moi ce salaud" {sale  eaii). The embarrassed footman was at a loss what to do.  
Such things appear trivial in print, but Sargent gave them  life. Any account of him which ignored this side, or failed to  show his receptivity to the humblest sources of amusement, would  be misleading. It is unnecessary, however, to draw further on  the store of such episodes with which his memory was peopled.  It was a common experience for him, 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 acceded, 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. He refused to make, as 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. To another lady who complained of the drawing of her  nose he said: "Oh, you can alter a little thing like that when  you get it home." To Lady Cholmondeley, of whom he did  two portraits, he always called the planes of the nostrils "the  devil's own."  
A sitter has given me an 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 un-  consciously 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 was working at 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 eyes 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 Tite  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 Faure 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 damned 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 colour to sound evidently refreshed him, and presumably the one art stimulated the other in his brain. 
He used to tell of Duse that she consented to give one sitting.  She arrived at midday and at five minutes to one rose from her  chair, saying, "Je vous souhaite de vivre mille ans et d'avoir la  gloire et beaucoup d'enfants, mais au revoir," and he never saw  her again.  

He had very decided views as to what clothes suited particular  sitters best. If for some reason they preferred their own choice  it was always to the detriment of the picture. For that superb  group of the four American Professors now at the Johns Hopkins  Institute, Baltimore, Sir William Osier proposed to wear his  Doctor's gown; Sargent said at once:  
No I can't paint you in that. It won't do. I know all about that  red. You know they gave me a degree down there and I've got one  of those robes. Musingly he went on "I've left it on the roof in the  rain. I've buried it in the garden. It's no use. The red is as red as  ever. The stuff is too good. It won't fade. Now if you could get a  Dublin degree ? The red robes are made of different stuff and if you  wash them they come down to a beautiful pink. Do you think you  could get a Dublin degree ? No, I couldn't paint you in that Oxford  red ! Why, do you know, they say that the women who work on the  red coats worn by the British soldiers have all sorts of troubles with  their eyes.  
The picture was painted in 33, Tite Street. In the back-  ground is the horseman by Greco, familiar to those who  visited his studio. None of his work excels this picture for  solemnity and dignity. The Academic atmosphere is there at  its best; it has judicial calm and authority. He has rendered a  noble conception with the utmost economy of means; for impressiveness and solidity of structure, for gradation in tone and  recession, for reflection in the light and luminosity in the shade  this picture will rank with his finest work. In the life of Sir  William Osier we read that "Sargent worried over posing them  and evidently did not think them beauties." Indeed, after  seeing Osier he said he had never before painted a man with an  olive-green complexion.  

In later years, at any rate, Sargent took pleasure in the  presence of someone besides the sitter in the studio. He liked  listening to what was said, and however intense his concentration,  he always seemed to follow and be able to join in the conversation. I never saw him more amused than when, about to paint  a famous statesman, he received a letter from the organizer of  the movement to have the portrait done, giving a list of topics suitable for discussion during the sittings. I remember the  first topic was the "Irish question." Sargent and the Irish  question ! Max Beerbohm could not have desired a better  subject for his pencil.  

More than once he had occasion to be embarrassed and also  amused by the subsequent fate of his pictures. Once one distinguished sitter had his hand painted out and later begged that  it might be painted in again. On another occasion a husband,  alarmed at his wife's decolletage, had a water-colour representation of tulle added in the name of propriety before the picture was  exhibited. The following letter, written to me in 1897, shows the  sort of request to which he was only too much accustomed:  

As you are going to R do if the opportunity occurs, rather dis-  courage the idea of my going down to do some fussy retouches to the   picture that B fancies it requires — among others to bring the color   of the hair up to date. I think it would be a great pity. There are  also hopeless difficulties in the way of doing the hand any better.  Every year I get in Italy, an invitation for some long past week-end  to run down to R and catch that little golden shade that I un-  accountably missed years ago. You might have a chance of suggesting  that old pictures ought to be left in peace.   When invited to alter a face and "soften" an expression, he  left no room for ambiguity in his answer.  

Dear ,

I have received your kind letter and if I thought an interview  was of the slightest use and would not lead to a further discussion I  would of course welcome it.  
But the point on which we differ is one with which a long experience  of portrait painting has made me perfectly familiar — I have very often  been reproached with giving a hard expression to ladies portraits,  especially when I have retained some look of intelligence in a face,  besides amiability, as I consider myself forced to do in this case.  
The expression of 's face in the portrait is kind and   indulgent, with over and above this, a hint at a sense of humour. If  I take this out, it will become as soft as anyone can desire. But as a  matter of fact nothing will make me, much as I regret not meeting  your wishes. ,

Yours truly,

John S. Sargent.

Many will remember the injuries done at the Adademy to  Sargent's portrait of Henry James by a suffragette on May 4,  1914. The moment the outrage was discovered Sargent was  telegraphed for. What followed is described by Mr. Lamb, the  Secretary to the Royal Academy:  
Just as I returned to the Academy (he had accompanied the woman  to the police station) and found some of the Council already arrived,  Sargent came into the room, and, although he must have seen out of  the corner of his eye the horrid ruin of his portrait gaping there on the  settee, he came straight over to me, with real anguish breaking out  over his whole big person and exclaimed "My dear Lamb, what a  dreadful business for you, I am so sorry." On my telling him I had  got the criminal locked up he went on "A mad- woman and a police-  court ! How awful for you !" And it was only when I led him to the  picture that he thought of examining the real disaster. I have no  doubt that other friends can quote similar instances of his quick self-  forgetting sympathy.  
That illustrates very well a certain definite kind of magnanimity characteristic of him. It is true that given good cause  he was capable of bearing resentment, but when such cause was  absent, it was the feelings of others which were uppermost in his  mind. His benevolence welled up spontaneously. He did not  suffer his personal stake to weigh in the balance. There was no  ostentation, the benefit was conferred, the altruistic thing done,  without his thinking twice about it.  
It was rare for him to speak of his portraits or comment on  his sitters, still rarer for him to write about either. The following  letter about his portrait of President Wilson, addressed to  his friend Mrs. Hale, is one of the few instances to the contrary:  
The New Willard,

Washington,

D. C.

 Oct. 20
My dear Mary, 7

I recognized your handwriting on the Ottawa poem.   Here I am well under weigh. Have had two sittings already and  hope to have one every afternoon. My sitter is interesting looking,  not at all like the Kodaks of him in the papers, and very suave and reposeful. The White House is empty, the habitation of the lynx  and the bittern. How different from the days of Roosevelt who posed  or rather didn't pose, in a crowd. . . .   My soul longs for the Pope Building, and if the President behaves  himself I hope to be back there in two weeks.  
Yours ever,

John S. Sargent.

To Mrs. Gardner he wrote at about the same time that the  President "was interesting to do, very agreeable to be with, and  the conditions are perfect, as he allows no interruptions and does  not hold levees as Roosevelt used to do."  
He was never complacent. That would have been inconsistent with his humility, which was proof against applause.  Few can have heard him express himself satisfied with any work  he had done. But it was a rare pleasure to hear him exclaim  in regard to one of his latest portraits: "That will show . . . that  I can still paint." It was the nearest thing to self-contentment  that in the course of thirty years I ever heard him express.  
He was adamant where the reproduction and exhibition of  pictures was concerned. He held the view that the artist, and  not the owner, was the arbiter. In the following letter to the  then secretary of the National Portrait Society he states his  position:  
Madam,

In reply to your consent for my request to exhibit a portrait,  the consent of the owner having been already obtained, I write to  point out, as I have done on similar occasions, that I consider this  to be the reverse of the order in which such consents should be applied  for when it is a question of an annual exhibition.   I make it a rule not to give my consent when that of the owner has   been obtained first.  
Yours faithfully,

John S. Sargent.

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