THE LETTERS OF JOHN SARGENT

Sargent's Life through his writing, paintings and drawings

Chapter XXI

ON January 14, 1897, Sargent was elected an Academician  by a large majority in a ballot against B. W. Leader. In  the July following he deposited temporarily a portrait  of Herr Johannes Wolff as his diploma work, signed the roll  and received his diploma. In 1900 he replaced the portrait by  A Venetian Interior exhibited in the Academy Exhibition of  that year. It had been painted for his friend Mrs. Curtis, the  owner of the Palazzo Barbaro, where he very often stayed when  in Venice. It had failed to meet with her approval; it had  offended in two ways; the portrait of herself was said to anticipate  advancing years, and her son seated on a table in an attitude of  nonchalance was inconsistent with the deportment observed  by Mrs. and Mr. Charles P. Curtis. Thus the picture became  one of the cornerstones of the Diploma Gallery.  

The picture has a quality of charm, indefinable, but to as  great a degree, perhaps, as any picture by Sargent. He has  made use of the most abbreviated means. By the aid of a few  smudges he has indicated the sumptuous Venetian decoration,  the carvings round the pictures, the scrolls and cherubs on  the walls, the lunettes above the doors; accuracy of eye and in-  fallibility of touch could hardly go further, the room bathed in  warm light and luminous shadows is filled with the local spirit.  Mrs. Curtis, with her embattled dignity, and her husband, with  his more venerable reposefulness as he looks at a volume of  engravings, are seen in the foreground; further back in the room  is the younger generation, Ralph the son and artist, jaunty and  debonair, and beside him in a high light the graceful figure of  his wife. Further away the remainder of the room in deep  shadow tells of another and an older Venice, of another and a  more spectacular social life.  

In 1898 he began his series of Wertheimer portraits,* and  writing to Lady Lewis shortly afterwards he described himself  as being in a state of "chronic Wertheimerism." Each picture  as it left the studio served to whet afresh the appetite of the  great art dealer. Indeed, Mr. Asher Wertheimer's only regret  was that there were not more Wertheimers for Sargent to paint.  There were no bounds to his admiration for the artist, or limits  to his desire for the perpetuation of his family on canvas. The  series began appropriately enough with the portraits of Mr. and  Mrs. Asher Wertheimer which were exhibited in the Academy  of 1898. It was the year of their silver wedding, and they were  to be presented to the world in a form which would long outlive  any anniversaries that they or many generations of their descendants were likely to celebrate. The portrait of Mrs. Asher  Wertheimer bears an aspect of great dignity, of a serene and  distinguished old age. She looks out of the canvas with a gaze  of kindly benevolence, and with not a little of quiet wisdom.  Representation may or may not be "irrelevant"; here, by means  of it, the artist has been able to move the spectator. Those  whose faith in that aspect of art may have been shaken can hardly  fail to find their confidence restored as they look on this impressive  rendering of a fellow-creature.  

As an example of skill in presenting character the portrait  of Mr. Wertheimer, who peers rather than gazes at the spectator, is even more remarkable. We are aware of success rather  cynically enjoyed, of assessments as acute in the case of humanity  as of works of art, of antipathies lived down by sheer astuteness,  of triumphant pertinacity and of commercial secrecy. But no  one picture of the Wertheimer series surpasses, and it may be  doubted if any equals, the portrait of the two sisters Miss Ena  (now Mrs. Robert M. Mathias) and Miss Betty (now Mrs.  Eustace A. Salaman). They are painted standing side by side.  The elder and taller of the two, dressed in white satin, has her  arm round the waist of her sister who, slighter and less tall, is in a  gown of deep red velvet. The design is compact, balanced and  rhythmic. The arms of the younger sister fall by her side, and  

* That these pictures now belong to the nation is largely due to the diplomatic  persuasion of Lord D'Abernon.  

Mrs. Asher Wertheimer

here Sargent has introduced a feature which has contributed  not a little to the distinction of the picture. He has painted  an open fan of transparent material in the right hand of the  model, the spokes turned towards the spectator, and by this  means he has prolonged the lines and carried on the tones of  the right arm. The open fan has given life and interest to this  section of the canvas and, set off against the red dress, has helped  to balance the distribution of dark and light in the picture.  The lines of the right arm are reminiscent of the portrait of  Madame Gauthereau; they have the same fluent vertical fall,  while the arm itself is turned in much the same way towards the  spectator. The iridescent ivory tints of the white dress, merging  into the delicate blues and greys of the Chinese vase, the flesh  tones, the background, and the beautifully painted hair of the  two girls show a consummate mastery of colour. This picture  is one of the completest expressions of Sargent's art. No stroke  of the brush is without significance; every accessory contributes  to the harmonious unity of the group; there is no dull or unnecessary passage. The result is a picture full of vigour and  vitality, constructed and modelled with astonishing solidity,  and of great decorative quality. The subject was well suited to  his brush. The two girls, in the prime of youth and splendid  types of their race, form a seductive contrast: the elder glowing,  opulent and triumphant; the younger slighter and less dramatic,  sheltered rather than dominated by her sister; the one in full sail,  the other, by comparison, gently floating on more quiet seas.  Of this picture Mr. Roger Fry wrote: "This is in its way a master-  piece. The poses of the figures are full of spontaneity and verve,  and the contrast between the leaning figure of the younger girl  and the almost exaggerated robustness of her sister is entirely  felicitous. And the arrangement once attained, in this case with  such conspicuous good fortune, Mr. Sargent has recorded it as  no one else could have done."  

Mrs. Mathias was again seen on the walls of the Academy in 1905 in the picture known as A Vele Gonfie. Unfortunately this picture, one of the finest of the series, was not included in the bequest to the nation.

While engaged at Fairford on his Boston decorations Sargent had made several attempts to model in clay. Modelling thence- forward was for him a recognized means to attaining his effects in the library decorations. In 1901 he exhibited at the Academy The Crucifix, his most important piece of sculpture. No one who looks at it can doubt Sargent's emotional interest in these decorations.*

Here on a Byzantine cross Sargent has placed the figure of the dying Christ; Adam and Eve are stationed closely to it in a crouching attitude on either side, each holding a chalice under an arm of the Cross to receive the Blood of Christ. At the foot of the Cross is a pelican feeding its young with the blood from its breast, an ancient symbol of the Resurrection. Below the feet of the Saviour is the serpent, signifying evil partially subdued. Above the arms of the Cross are written the words: "Remissa Sunt Peccata Mundi." The Crucifix, the ground- work of which is gold, is so placed in the Sargent Hall that the foot of the Cross forms part of the frieze of the angels. The remainder of the Cross is included in the scheme of the lunette of the Trinity immediately above. The angels of the frieze, two of whom uphold the Cross, carry the instruments of the Passion. Woven on the garments of the two supporting angels are the symbols of the Eucharist, wheat and wine. The angels, eight in number, to symbolize regeneration, are clad in Byzantine draperies, their faces aglow with the beatific vision, and illumined by the sanctity of their office. The frieze, as in the case of that of the prophets, is divided from the lunette by a cornice. On this is written an inscription which Sargent found in the Cathedral of Cephalu in Sicily. "Factus Homo, Factor Hominis, Factique Redemptor. Corporeus Redimo Corpora Cordi Deus."

The lunette contains three colossal figures. These are the Persons of the Trinity. They are bound by a single red cloak

* It now forms part of the "Dogma of the Redemption," at the south end of the Sargent Hall, facing the frieze of "The Prophets" and the lunette of "The Children of Israel under the hands of their oppressors," already referred to.
f Sargent substituted the word Redimo for Judico in the original — a change necessitated by the character of the decoration.

THE MISSES WETHEIMER

with a hem of gold. Their faces, slightly in relief, are exactly  similar. Each raises a right hand in the manner of benediction  common to the Greek Church. Thus is their oneness symbolized.  A difference in the form of the crown worn by each figure indicates the difference of their several attributes. 

The original bronze presented by Miss Sargent and Mrs.  Ormond as a memorial to their brother now stands in the crypt  of St. Paul's. There it can be judged as a work of art unrelated  to the scheme for which it was designed and of which it now  forms a part.  

Throughout the composition we have the sense that he was  profoundly conscious of the majesty of the subject with which  he was dealing.*  

Whistler, as soon as he saw The Crucifixion in the Academy,  wrote to Sargent to say how fine he thought it,f and Whistler,  as we learn from the Pennell Life, was not given to praising  Sargent's art. Sargent himself considered that he had succeeded  beyond his hopes. It was a work for which he had more liking  than he generally allowed himself to entertain for his achievements. He gave to a few of his friends a small reproduction,  and in a letter to Lady Lewis gave directions how it should be  hung.  

I am sending you the little bronze crucifix which I feel I rather  thrust upon you, but still I know you will like it if only that it will  remind you of the better big one. It ought to be hung about the  level of one's eye and if possible not in too strong a side light. A top  light is best but not easy to find in a house unless you can find room  for it on your staircase. But to dictate where a gift horse is to go would  be looking the recipient in the mouth as Solomon says. I am only  too delighted that it should be in your house.  

In 1902 Sargent spent the month of August in Norway.  There he painted On His Holidays, a salmon river tumbling  with agitated waters through a rocky channel with a portrait  

* The idea of Adam and Eve receiving the blood of Christ on the Cross is found  in a thirteenth-century window at Angers, and in another at Bourges. These are  referred to in fimile Male's "Religious Art in France, Thirteenth Century," a book  which was in the possession of Sargent and sold after his death. The American  sculptor St. Gaudens, in a letter, described the Crucifix as a "masterpiece."  

E. R. and J. Pennell, "The Whistler Journal,"

of young McCulloch lying on one of the rocks beside the salmon  he had caught. The picture has the chilling accuracy of a  photograph. It is a plain unvarnished tale, told in a cold  Northern light, the work of an accomplished craftsman who has  for the time being doffed the role of artist.  

In London it was becoming rarer to meet him at the houses  of other people. His circle was contracting to the radius of his  real preferences. He had by no means a comprehensive interest  in humanity; on the contrary, his taste in people as time went on  became narrowly restricted. It was, in fact, only in a chosen  circle that he was completely at his ease. No man could work  at such pressure and not require that his relations with his  fellowmen should be free of effort and constraint and devoid of  formality. The "social function" element was irksome and  distasteful to him. The commerce of words was only free and  unhampered in a familiar atmosphere, in places where he could  be mentally in his shirt-sleeves, in all "the quotidian undress  and relaxation of his mind." Friendships which he had once  formed he did not change or abate. To the end of his life he  continued and carried along with him those he had made in  his early days. But others were formed. In ,1898 he painted  Mrs. Charles Hunter, the wife of Mr. Charles Hunter, a north-  country coalowner, and the sister of Dame Ethel Smyth the  composer. The Hunters entertained considerably in London.  In the country they had a seventeenth-century house, Hill Hall,  near Epping, some twenty miles by road from Hyde Park Corner.  It was furnished and decorated in the Italian style and in admirable taste by Mrs. Hunter, who, herself keenly interested in the  arts, had the faculty of gathering within the fold of her generous  hospitality rising and risen lights of the literary and artistic  world. 

Sargent had paid tribute in kind to his hostess by marbling  two immense columns, veritable Jackim and Boaz, in the hall,  painting with the skill of the most accomplished house decorator.  

Writing in 191 2 from Hill Hall, Henry James says:* . . . "I  have made . . . this much a dash into the world. It is the  
* "Letters," ii.

ALFRED WERTHEIMER.

world of the wonderful and delightful Mrs. Charles Hunter,  whom you may know (long my very kind friend), and all swimming just now in a sea of music; John Sargent (as much a player  as a painter), Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter, Wilfred de Glehn  and others: round whose harmonious circle, however, I roam  as in outer darkness, catching a vague glow through the veiled  windows of the temple, but on the whole only intelligent enough  to feel and rue my stupidity — which is quite the wrong condition." In this world there could often be seen on Sunday  and occasionally on week-days an assembly of notables seasoned  with more fashionable and less renowned members of society.  Henry James, George Moore, Max Beerbohm, Sargent, Professor  Tonks, Wilson Steer, D. S. MacColl, de Glehns, Ethel Smyth,  Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter, Cyril Scott, were among those  most often to be found there. It was in just such company  Sargent was most at ease, and it was such surroundings that his  friendship with Mrs. Hunter henceforward secured for him.  As the years went by, work during seven whole days of the week  made it difficult and physically irksome for him to leave London.  He stayed, too, at Lympne, Houghton and Panshanger. But  paying visits — although once he was there no one seemed more  care free — entailed in his case a surprising amount of preliminary  worry. His real home was the house of his sister Emily. He  talked to her every morning on the telephone, and when not  dining out he dined with her in her room looking over the  Thames. This was hung with the red damask that he had bought  for her in Venice and, like her other rooms, with the pictures  he had painted for her. Most evenings they had guests. Henry  James, Mrs. Curtis, Professor Tonks, Wilson Steer, de Glehns,  Nelson Ward, the Harrisons, Barnards, Alfred Parsons, Joseph  Farquharson, R.A., Erskine Childers, and a few Academicians  formed the nucleus of their society. Professor Tonks writes:  "I was introduced to his mother and sister by Steer, and was  invited to Mrs. Sargent's flat (as it then was) in Carlyle Mansions  to dinner, very often now it seems to me, looking back, where I  spent some of the happiest evenings of my life. Sargent was  generally there, and I have a feeling that those who were not fortunate enough to meet him at those dinners missed the best  of him. The evenings were very informal; we generally went  in our ordinary clothes, and there was a sense of freedom which  encouraged everyone to speak at his best. Sargent was on these  occasions decidedly a good talker. As a public speaker he was a  complete failure; at a dinner given to him by the Chelsea Arts  Club he could do little else than hang on to the table, but at the  table in Carlyle Mansions he made an admirable host, enjoyed  talking himself and listening to others. He had a very accurate  memory, disconcerting at times, as he had a way of correcting  careless quotations. He was a most honest and fearless expresser  of his views, perhaps a little irritable on contradiction, more so  as time went on."  

Every autumn after his mother's death in 1905 would see  him crossing the Channel, always with his sister Emily, and either  with the de Glehns or Miss Eliza Wedgwood, or the Misses  Barnard, or Mrs. Ormond and her children, bound for some  sketching centre in Italy or Corfu, Majorca or Spain, or in  the Val d'Aosta. To the latter place he and his sister went  in three successive years, and it was there that he painted  Cashmere, The Hermit and well-known pictures of his nieces  lying in various attitudes by the clear running brook, in brilliant  Oriental clothes, which he took with him from London for the  purpose. One year he travelled with a stuffed gazelle, bought at  Rowland Ward's, which was to figure in some landscape. Here,  too, he painted the portrait of himself by fixing a mirror to the  trunk of a tree. This was a task that bored him unspeakably,  and after a few strokes of his brush he would dash off to the brook  to do one of his sketches. The gazelle was left at the  painters' chalet in the Val d'Aosta, the portrait now hangs in  the Urlizi.  
What scenery did Sargent prefer ? We have already noticed  how little he concerned himself with panorama and distance,  and that he preferred "close ups"; within these limits and given  bright sunshine his range was exceedingly wide. His letters  contain some indications of his preferences. Writing to Ralph  Curtis from the Palazzo Barbaro in 19 13 he said:  

The de Glehns my sister and I are off in a day or two to the I ,akc  of Guarda, where we have discovered a nasty little pension on a little  promontory, which is otherwise paradise — cypresses, olives, a villa, a  tiny little port, deep clear water and no tourists.  
Again writing to the same correspondent he says:  
.. „ Rome.

My dear Ralph,

I wish it were possible to accept your kind invitation and the  
Dogaressa's (Mrs. Curtis) but it were easier for a camel to pass through   a rich man's eye. The time is getting so short. I foresee that I shall   hang on here till the train starts for Chelsea. ... In spite of scirocco   and lots of rain we have been seeing the villas within miles round thanks   to Mrs. Hunter's motor. They are magnificent and I should like   to spend a summer at Frascati and paint from morning till night at the   Tortonia or the Falconiere, ilexes and cypresses, fountains and statues   — ainsi soit il — amen.  
To Mrs. Adrian Stokes he wrote:

Ronda is a most picturesque place with magnificent scenery. It  is on the edge of a tremendous cliff that looks across a great hollow  with fine angular rocky ranges of mountains that would just suit  Stokes. The objection to it is that the small boys are perfect devils  and throw stones at painters and worry them out of their wits.  
He had no liking for trim and ordered gardens; they had to  be derelict or at any rate unkempt, and the more time had  played undisturbed with the tresses of tree and shrub the  more was his eye satisfied. Of Aranjuez he wrote:  
This place is perfectly charming, grand gardens with Caver-  nous avenues and fountains and statues, long neglected — good  natured friendly people — lunch in the open air under arbours of  roses. These Spaniards are the most amiable people in the world, they  put themselves out for you in the most extraordinary way. With the  common people it is no disadvantage being an American, for their  newspapers told them that they gave us the most tremendous licking  in Cuba. And the Artists and better people will do anything for a  stranger.  
Venice, once his favourite haunt, he thought had been rather  marred for an artist by "the swarms of larky smart Londoners whose goings on fill the Gazette" goings on which, however, never  failed to afford him amusement.  
These extracts show his fidelity in taste to the environment of his childhood and early training. But olive and  ilex, fountain and statue, sunlight and shade, rocks and  running water were to him just problems of form and colour,  opportunities for the exercise of his supreme craftsmanship  rather than settings for moods induced by association or  reflection.  
In the winter of 1905 he was in Palestine "getting new fuel  for his decorative work"; he was disappointed with the result.  
Some new material (he wrote to Lady Lewis) I have secured but  it is different from what I had in view and not abundant — no  miraculous draught but I shall still fish here for a while and try to  bring back some weightier stuff than lots of impossible sketches and  perhaps useless studies.  
In January, 1906, he was in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem  when news reached him of his mother's illness and death. He  was deeply affected. He telegraphed begging that the funeral  should be delayed till his return. This was done. Meanwhile  he spent days of agitated distress waiting at Jaffa for a boat. A  strong tie had been broken. He was a devoted son.  
Everything is dreadful (he wrote) except that her friends were good  and that death itself came unsuspected and unrecognized. . . .*  
To these tours through Europe in his chosen company he  owed some of the happiest months of his life. He was away  from portraits, which by 1909 had become wearisome to him.  As early as 1906 he had written to Lady Lewis: "I have now got  a bomb-proof shelter into which I retire when I sniff the coming  portrait or its trajectory." Abroad he could go where his eye  led him, and choose his subject; life was plain sailing on a sea of  summer. He would breakfast at 7.30, and then sally out to  sketch, working till the light failed. His energy was inexhaustible. The hours of sunshine were treasured like gold. Sight seeing was reserved for rainy days. In the evenings he would  play chess, or the piano where one was available — duets, with  Mrs. de Glehn or Miss Eliza Wedgwood, from Brahms, Schumann or Albeniz. "The only pleasure," he wrote, "of coming  back to one's own house is the pleasure of unpacking the bibelots  one has got elsewhere — good wholesome sentiment."  

* Letter to Lady Lewis.

Chapter XXII

SARGENT'S greatest portraits are not the product of any-  particular period, they lie scattered through his work. In  the first English years we get the Misses Vickers> Mrs.  Boit Mrs. Hemenway, and then in 1895 Coventry Patmore and  Graham Robertson. In 1897 Mrs. Carl Meyer's portrait was  shown at the Academy. None of his pictures is more effectively  organized and composed, none is more melodious. It strikes  a note of gaiety as of silver bells. There is the optimism of  spring in the running lines of the composition and the freshness  of the rose and pink colour which swim through the picture.  Sumptuousness in dress and furniture tells its story of opulence,  but it is refined and rarefied, robbed of its insistence, and subdued  to the central purpose of the design. The colour scheme is  closely related; remove a ribbon, straighten a fold of the dress,  release a figure from the pattern of the sofa, or dispense with an  accent and the whole picture would suffer, its unity would  crumble. There is nothing obvious or redundant, nothing that  is not charming, even exciting, in this triumphant artistry. The  Meyer picture was followed by the Wertheimer series, Miss Jane  Evans , Mrs. Charles Hunter ', Lady Faudel Phillips and in 1900  the Wyndham group.  

This is one of his most purely and unmistakably English  pictures, a tour de force in characterization, drawing and the  handling of white. Three figures dressed in white, and a white  sofa in the lower half of the picture presented formidable  difficulties : a risk of suggesting a section of geological strata.  The artist has posed the elder sister seated on the back of the sofa,  in profile, her head slightly turned to the spectators; her delicate  intellectual beauty dominates the scene and carries the white  into the upper section of the canvas. Further relief to the mass  has been obtained by the magnolias, which effect the transition into the shadow of the room beyond. The beauty of the picture  lies not only in the colour and drawing, but in the impression of  serenity and calm. Sargent has here isolated these sisters from  the world and encompassed them with their own associations.  They are back once again in the surroundings that made their  common bond; their mother's picture by Watts is seen on the  wall beyond, the noise of life is hushed for the moment. There  is a charming sentiment in the composition without a trace of  sentimentality.  

LADY SASSOON.

In the following years the Academy saw the portraits of  Mrs. Charles Russell, C. S. Lock, Mrs. Leopold Hirsch, the  Marlborough group, M. Leon Delafosse and in 1907 the portrait  of Lady Sassoon.  
In the portrait of Lady Sassoon, Sargent has conveyed a subtle  impression of the individuality of his sitter. Evidently he was  here confronted with a highly strung temperament, features of  exceptional distinction and refinement, and a personality kindly,  alert — even to the point of restlessness — and instinct with pride  of race. The result is both a study of character and a work  of art. It is painted with the utmost freedom and dexterity.  The tumultuous crown of feathers in the hat, the movement  suggested in the pose of the figure, the quick play of light and  shade over the black silk cloak, the elegant and sensitive hands,  all contribute to an impression bordering on flurry. Yet in  spite of this a certain nobility and calm, deeper than momentary agitation, is the ultimate effect of the composition. Not  infrequently Sargent is criticized for opaqueness or leatheriness  in his paint, for a want of luminosity and charm in his colour;  here there is no trace of these defects. The delicate ivory white  of the skin has a quality of transparency, the liveliness of the  black and the softness of the rose-colour, introduced to give fresh-  ness to the scheme, are delightful. All has been painted with a  sure and fluent touch. If the spectator disregards the portrait  and considers solely the picture, he is at once struck by the beauty  of the design, its plastic structure, the crisp freshness of the  colour, and the black background on which the figure has been  wrought. This has a quality of range and mystery purely atmospheric, its depth appears illimitable, an effect which  Sargent has equally achieved in the case of his portrait of Lord  Wemyss. Of the latter picture Mr. Downes says: "His lordship  did not like it at all and was not the least disposed to conceal his  feelings in the matter." Mr. Downes has been entirely misinformed. The picture, subscribed for by friends, was painted  for Lord Wemyss* ninetieth birthday. Sargent considered it  one of the best portraits he had painted, a view which was fully  shared by the sitter. Nothing is more remarkable in this picture  than the way in which the dreariness of modern dress has been  disposed of, and a frock coat and tall hat made to serve the end  of art. The hat, held in the left hand, reflects a subdued accent  of light; the lines of the coat barely to be distinguished from  the background, lose all rigidity in the obscurity, emphasize the  composition and indicate the upright carriage and dignity of the  figure. The hands, which supply a half-tone in the lower section  of the canvas, are a fine example of the painter's gift for modelling,  and illustrate a topic to which he often referred — namely, the  effect on the circulation and consequently on the tones of the  hands when they are held downwards for more than a few  moments.  

The picture of Lord Wemyss, 1909, may be regarded as the  close of Sargent's official career as a portrait painter: after that  he painted only when importunity made it churlish to refuse,  or his own decided inclination prompted him to accede.  

It is more difficult with Sargent than with most artists to  determine the approximate date of any given picture. We can  see that the Misses Vickers is an early and F. J. H. Jenkinson  a late work; we can safely assign to the years 1888-89  certain essays in Impressionism; and we could even feel confident  that Wineglasses and An Atlantic Storm were painted in his  youth; but, apart from these instances, his transitions as a  portrait painter are so slight and so gradual that his pictures  painted after 1884 show differences of style which are scarcely  perceptible.  
As time progressed and his facility grew, there may be noticed  a tendency to emphasis, especially in draperies, the folds becoming deeper, the planes more complicated, while lights and accents  are flicked on to the canvas with increasing skill and effect. But  in the broader aspects of structure, design and colouring his  style shows no variation that can be related to a year or a decade.  His best pictures are those with the least definite backgrounds,  his least successful those that have an out-of-door mise en scene.  His English scenery in his full-length portraits is cold and artificial, often arbitrary as a photographer's studio. In the multitude of his works his excellence as a painter of animals is too  frequently lost sight of. Yet who has painted dogs with the  same characterization, whether we take the self-conscious  dandyism of the poodles in the pictures of Asher Wertheimer  and Graham Robertson the fussy intelligence of the Duke of  Portland's collies, or the care-free repose of the terrier in the  Hunter group ? Or who has rendered with equal perspicacity  the slow strength of oxen, the texture of their coats, their  imperturbability and their gaze of patient enquiry ? Whether he  is painting a herd of goats on a hillside or horses picketed in their  lines, he gives their distinguishing character just as he makes the  utmost use of them for his design.  

Although he gave up portrait painting he went on with his  charcoal and pencil heads, and a census of these would produce a  startling figure. It has been found impossible to arrive at even  an approximate estimate of those he did in London and America.  A distinguished diplomatist made a habit, when he found himself  at dinner next to a lady he did not know, of saying: "How do  you like your Sargent drawing?" He declared that as a conversational gambit it was successful nine times out of ten. But  it is not by these drawings that Sargent will live: they are likenesses and deliberate exercises in skill; it is only in comparatively  few that his genius is apparent. 
Though he left a considerable fortune there is little  doubt that he could have doubled or trebled it. Money was a  part of the machinery of life in which he took very little interest.  His charges for portraits varied considerably: for the Vickers  group (1884) he received £400, the Ladies Aches on group (1901)  £2,100, for the Baltimore Doctors (1906) £3,000, for the Marlborough group (1906) 2,500 guineas. For full-lengths he received  1,000 guineas, for lesser pictures prices varying from £500 to  £800. During the War for two pictures, one of President  Wilson, the other of Mrs. Duxbury, painted for the British Red  Cross, he received £10,000 each and to that extent enriched the  funds of the society. For oil landscapes he asked prices varying  from £100 to £500, for water-colours seldom more than £50.  For eighty-three water-colours sold to an American museum in  1909 he received £4,000. For charcoal portraits he charged at  first 21 guineas, which price was gradually increased till in 1923  he began charging 100 guineas.  
With regard to his drawings he wrote to Lady Lewis: "I  never know what to ask for a mere snapshot especially, if it does  not happen to be a miraculously lucky one."  

It was with the utmost reluctance that he could be induced,  for the purpose of sale, to pull out any one of the water-colours  which used to lie in their frames, jammed one against the other,  in a large rack on the floor of his studio. If in response to insistence he acquiesced, he would produce one or two, always with a  good deal of gutteral protest, pointing out what he considered  their drawbacks, and qualifying them with some derogatory  title. "Vegetables," "Dried Seaweed," "Troglodytes of the  Cordilleras," "Blokes," "Idiots of the Mountains" and "Intertwingles" come back to me as a few of the titles bestowed on  various renderings of woodland scenery, muleteers, figures on a  hillside, and of a portrait group on a river bank. Mrs. de Glehn  remembers a picture he painted in Corfu of three figures, including herself and Miss Wedgwood, in "keepsake" attitudes,  which he labelled with complete gusto to himself as "Triple  Bosh." This picture now figures in a South American collection  under a more official title.  

On another occasion in the Simplon when he had done a  water-colour of recumbent figures, with his easel fixed in a depression of the ground, he called the result "A Worm's Eye View." 

Mr. Downes, in his account of Sargent's "Life and Work," mentions that he once asked him whether "Darnation, Silly, Silly, Pose," an alternative title for Carnation, Lily Lily Rose, was attributable to Whistler, and that Sargent replied that it did not sound like Whistler. The author of the quip, however, was not far to seek. These mock titles, which might be multiplied, sprang from no affectation and were due to no desire to belittle what he had done, but were shot to the surface from an undercurrent of boyishness which never left him, from a horror of pomposity and portentousness about his art, and even, one might say, to check and damp down any tendency in others to an excess of admiration. They were the play of an essentially humble spirit.

JOHN SINGER SARGENT SKETCHING.

Frequently the prices he asked showed that he had no idea  of the commercial value of these sketches. Dealers have been  known, after getting the pictures home, to proffer a further sum  in acquittal of what had all the appearance of an unconscionable  bargain. Indeed, the whole process of bargain and sale was  conducted on such original and topsy-turvy principles that  amateurs had to employ artifice in order to force the price up to  a fair level. On one occasion a friend of his, afraid that on a  straight deal the artist would either make a present of the picture  or charge a nominal amount, professed to be acting for a South  African millionaire. A picture was chosen, but Sargent objected  that he did not want it to go out of the country. It was pointed  out that the millionaire had a house in London for which the  picture was wanted. On that understanding the deal was  concluded, but on terms which remained most inadequate for  the seller. When Sargent had ascertained the true facts he  wrote:  
My dear ,

Your methods give me the cold shivers, and I am filled with  awe when I remember the candid face you showed when I asked you  if there was any nonsense about your enquiry. If there was a sun  today it would go down on my perplexity and indecision if not on  my wrath. I shall have to consult a clairvoyante or the bowels of a  bird as to what action I must take.  
Yours as a rule,

John S. Sargent.

He was more amused than incensed. Enough has been said  to show that he was the least mercenary of men. He belonged neither to those whose generosity is beyond their means nor to  that larger class whose means are beyond their generosity. He  gave where assistance was wanted. His disregard of money  was part of the largeness of his character and outlook. It may  be doubted if in later years he had the least idea what he was  worth. Towards the end of his life an occasion arose when it  became necessary to tell him the amount which he had standing  to his credit in the United States. He could only say: "It  can't be mine, they've made a mistake at the Bank, it must belong  to someone else." As long as he had sufficient means wherewith  to pursue his art in his own way and, above all, to assist others,  he was entirely indifferent to money. He made no enquiries  and left to others the conduct of his affairs.  

ANTHONY ASQUITH.

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