sargent's painting notes

JOHN SINGER SARGENT'S PAINTING NOTES

Painting is an interpretation of tone.

...Keep the planes free and simple, drawing a full brush down the whole contour of a cheek.

...Always paint one thing into another and not side by side until they touch.

...The thicker your paint—the more your color flows.

...Simplify, omit all but the most essential elements—values, especially the values. You must clarify the values.

...The secret of painting is in the half tone of each plane, in economizing the accents and in the handling of the lights.

...You begin with the middle tones and work up from it .... so that you deal last with your lightest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents.

...Paint in all the half tones and the generalized passages quite thick.

...It is impossible for a painter to try to repaint a head where the understructure was wrong.

SARGENT'S PALETTE

Flake White
Naples Yellow
Yellow Ochre
English Red
Vermilion
Ivory Black
Prussian Blue

Practical Hints for Art Students by Charles A. Lasar, first published in 1910

Charles Lasar, Practical Hints for Art Students, (Duffield & Company, New York, 1923), pp. 183-187.

A vertical line gives dignity to a figure.

Never lose the symmetric form but forget a part here and there.

Life is the ornament to a scene.

The emotion of the movement of the principal figure or interest must be felt all through the scene.

The emotional frame consists in reproducing the movement in the masses.

Design is the composition of the emotion, which may be in the color or the form, depending upon the subject.

The stronger the tone line in a portrait the more dignified the pose.

To make a figure stand more firmly introduce horizontal lines, vertical lines give stiffness to a pose.

Now and then planes may be influenced by reflection. If a feature is ugly, like the chin for instance, one can reflect light onto it and take out some of its force.

Action is generally expressed by an oblique, dignity by vertical, and solidity by horizontal conditions.

The action of a figure may be effectively enhanced by the disposition of the hands in characteristic attitudes according to the emotion of the scene.

If you wish a figure or object to come forward let it influence an object behind it, and be itself influenced by an object in front of it.

The principal interest should be like lightning in the sky, that seen above everything else.

Sudden variety causes interest.

When a figure is bending over, the side that inclines the most should catch your eye first in value, color, and form.

The spots of a general color scheme may be taken from a suggestive part of the scene. For instance a man smoking may have his clothes the color of smoke, his cap fire red and the background or furniture a tobacco brown.

Never paint a portrait as though the person were posing. A natural position can only be kept for a few seconds, it is like a flash of lightning. You must just put down a few large marks for the chosen position of head, hands, feet, etc., and keep fitting the sitter into them.

Portraits and other figure subjects need light from above as well as at the side. Some persons require a warm and others a cold light, to bring out their best characteristics, both in form and color.

In portraits some persons will show to most advantage in color, while others are more striking in form considered as line.

A figure may be elegant but not graceful. Proportion gives elegance, movement grace, color charm.

In painting a portrait when making your tone put a little more rose into it than you really see.

Sometimes it is the character and sometimes the emotion that makes a portrait tell.

If the color is too brilliant in the face a portrait will lack refinement.

If a picture is not showy enough it is the fault of values; if it lacks in charm the color is wrong; if it is not solid local conditions are to blame.

In painting a portrait keep the lines of the body contrary to the lines of the profile.

Accessory forms are not eyes, nose, and mouth.

The direct condition of the flesh is peach bloom, surroundings cruder, lips to look like fruit.

Look out for a few hairs on the top surfaces, they give depth to a beard.

Be careful not to get the ear purple or it will look frozen.

If a picture lacks charm make it blush a little, but avoid fever.

A portrait does not depend upon the little things, but upon the big relations and differences. Look out for cheek bones, the direction of the mouth whether oblique or horizontal, how the eyes slant in the face, these are the things that count and not a little pretty drawing here and there. Some people have long faces, others short; some have sloping shoulders, others square, etc.

Clumsiness may be a quality.

Form, value, and tone are three chances for making a thing good.

A portrait may be dramatic in color, but not in form or values, or vice versâ.

Keep a portrait full of life and action, never put down the tired conditions of a pose.

Where beauty is lacking expression and color may charm.

It is good practise when about to paint a head to mix first the flesh tint general, then hair, background, eyes, and lips; understanding that lips are the accent to flesh as eyes and eyebrows are to hair.

The color of eyes and lips show off the clearness of skin.

If you wish to keep flesh color clear leave out as many half tones as possible.

Accenting eyes and mouth in value and color will also clear the complexion.

"Why [Sargent's] brushwork looks so fluent and easy..."

I remember reading that John Singer Sargent would often require many sittings to get his portraits right, and that he was rarely satisfied with his first efforts.

But I always wondered: Did he scrape off each false start and then begin all over again? Or did he just work over the previous start after it had dried? How did he know when a painting was going wrong?

Thanks to two of his former pupils, Miss Heyneman and Mr. Henry Haley, we have an idea of his methods:


"He drew a full, large brush down the whole contour of a cheek (over one of her half-finished studies), obliterating apparently all the modeling underneath, but it was always further to simplify that he took these really dreadful risks, smiling at my ill concealed perturbation and quite sympathizing with it.

"The second painting taught me that the whole values of a portrait depends upon its first painting, and that no tinkering can ever rectify an initial failure. Provided every stage is correct, a painter of Mr. Sargent's caliber could paint for a week on one head and never retrace his steps -- but he never attempted to correct one. He held that it was as impossible for a painter to try to repaint a head where the understructure was wrong, as for a sculptor to remodel the features of a head that has not been understood in the mass. That is why Mr. Sargent often repainted the head a dozen times, he told me that he had done no less than sixteen of Mrs. Hammersley.

“When he was dissatisfied he never hesitated to destroy what he had done. He spent three weeks, for instance, painting Lady D' Abernon in a white dress. One morning, after a few minutes of what was to be the final setting, he suddenly set to work to scrape out what he had painted. The present portrait in a black dress (above), was done in three sittings.

“He did the same with the portrait of Mrs. Wedgwood, and many others. Miss Eliza Wedgwood relates that in 1896 he consented, at the insistence of Alfred Parsons, to paint her mother. She sat for him twelve times, but after the twelfth sitting he said she would both be the better for a rest.

“He then wrote to Miss Wedgwood that he was humiliated by his failure to catch the variable and fleeting charm of her mother's personality -- that looked like the end of the portrait. Some weeks later he saw Mrs. Wedgwood at Broadway, and struck with a new aspect he said:

‘If you will come up next week we will finish that portrait.’

“She came to Tite Street, a new canvas was produced, and in six sittings he completed the picture which was shown at the Memorial Exhibition.

“I have also seen the assertion that he painted a head always in one sitting. He painted a head always in one process, but that could be carried over several sittings. He never attempted to repaint one eye or to raise or lower it, for he held that the construction of a head prepared the place for the eye, and if it was wrongly placed, the understructure was wrong, and he ruthlessly scraped and repainted the head from the beginning. That is one reason why his brushwork looks so fluent and easy; he took more trouble to keep the unworried look of a fresh sketch than many a painter puts upon his whole canvas.

“The purpose of all this reworking was to: develop (in Sargent's words) ‘an appetite to attack the problem afresh at every sitting, each attempt resulting in a more complete visualization in the mind. The process is repeated until the canvas is completed.’”

Pietro Annigoni

"[Pietro] Annigoni was born in Milan in 1910 and lived in Florence for most of his life. He is known for helping draft a manifesto in the late 40s advocating realism in an art world that was consumed by Abstract Expressionism. He became famous for his portraits, with his popularity seeming to peak in the early 60s. Annigoni is perhaps most famous for a somewhat romanticized portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, a likeness that was chosen for use on several paper currencies in the British Commonwealth."

Brand-new Museo Pietro Annigoni in Florence, website has online gallery


aforementioned portrait:

Self-portrait, 1946:

portrait of Maria Ricciarda (1970):


Queen Margherita of Denmark 1978:



4 Time Magazine covers:

John F Kennedy 1962


Pope John XXIII 1962


Ludwig Erhard 1963


Lyndon Johnson 1968