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Great American painting, From WINSLOW HOMER to FASHIONED by SARGENT

Friday, January 5, 2024 15:04

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The World of Winslow Homer (Time Life Library of Art, 1966) by John Thomas Flexner shows unpeopled sea and landscapes, humans battling nature with revelatory emotion and technique. A favorite of mine is the watercolor of the artist’s studio, both specific and abstract.

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was part of The Hudson River School but he also stood apart. Many of these self-taught “Yankee” painters, like Cole, an Englishman, came to paint the pure luminous light of the New World with unknown seasons. Cole, a portrait peddlar, knocked on doors with canvas and art supplies strapped to his back, until he to “learn from nature.” Homer, apprenticed o a printer, learned to produce in-depth black and white illustration. After his freedom, he became a master of watercolors and taught himself to paint what he saw in oils. Surprising to him, the work sold.

New England light contrasted to a brutal environment, where men and women fought storms and dove for sponges in extreme heat. Here is “Lifeline,”an etching, and an oil painting of a sponge hunter.

The breakthroughs of Cole, Church, Eakins and Homer, who were largely self-taught, were new and completely American. Known as The Hudson River School, there work was popular in America and abroad. Before them, nature was not considered an appropriate subject for serious painters.They decided to formalize their work in an “Academy,” so it would not disappear. he Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was based on their teaching. Ironically, their world would radically change.

The Erie Canal made Boston a backwater to the leading metropolis, New York City. Boston did possess a school of painting that insisted on American inspiration, but the Industrial Revolution brought a darkening of Yankee light. The aesthetics of The Hudson River School were overshadowed by the smoke of the Industrial Revolution. Factories and fortunes were to be celebrated in the new Gilded Age. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was considered by Winslow Homer one of the “New Men,”who studied in France in ateliers/ They learned to draw and paint from plaster busts, imitating Italian Masters. They brought Impressionist techniques and theory to American painting, though many, like Sargent, lived in England and France.

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FASHIONED BY SARGENT, by Erica E. Hirshler Parsons w/Caroline Corbeau, James Finch and Pamela A. Parmol, MFA BOSTON is the extraordinary companion book to the exhibition produced by two museums, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Tate Museum in Britain. It is available at D.A.P. (Distributed Art Publishers). Besides the evolution of individual portraits, there are fascinating essays on the techniques of fashion (materials and design), social conventions in women’s dress, roles of class and politics. Photos of actual dresses worn or facsimiles constructed by the artist reveal surprising design, fabric and finishes. Readers experience how portrait painting in Sargent’s hands was not just about creating a likeness for family histories, but a vehicle for commentary on the personality of the sitter and milieu in which they lived.

Sargeant’s work, often reproduced in the press, became an event. Fame began with infamy, his scandalous portrait of Madame X. The glamorous American Madame Gautreau, the wife of a wealthy businessman, curated her “look” like a chic fashionista. Though she was eager collaborator with Sargeant, her portrait was “no charge” because he was an admirer of her style. Why was the portrait a scandal? The morals of France dictated formal outrage over a shoulder strap, but it’s suggested it may also have been a cultural slap at the effrontery of two Americans intruding on the French monopoly of chic. Sargeant, like many a celebrity today, retreated for a couple years. Eventually, he returned a star

Helena (Ena) Wertheimer

Rarely was a commission left unpaid (or undelivered). Portraits were important, whether commissions were of royal or nouveau riche origin. In the bridal portrait below, typically painted before the event, the young woman, Helena (Ena) Wertheimer far from the demure pose and attire expected of aristocratic ladies. She’s painted as a Cavalier in a plumed hat and a fabric draped to a man’s cloak with the hint of a sword hilt. Sargeant liked the free spirited exuberance of this young woman, the daughter of a Jewish merchant, and honored it in this cross-dressing look.

Dress was a loose term for Sargeant, who routinely rejected couture gowns brought by his wealthy clients. Heoften preferred draping fabrics or using existing garments in his studio. He ironically called himself “a painter and dressmaker,” when he devised a look for painterly effect. Black or white wereoften used to focus character, but his vision showed in how they were worn, and accompanying objects.

In this portrait of Lady Helen Vincent, a beauty, there is an improvised look. Sometimes sitters had to be careful of the pins, but Helen was probably acquainted with him.

Lady Helen Vincent

Sargeant’s interpretations brought something new to American portrait painting. Unlike Eakins, whose sitters sometimes failed to pick up their portraits, because of his uncompromsing “honesty”, Sargeant’s sitters learned to see themselves through his enigmatic sensibility. If it was at odds with a husband’s view of his wife, or her feelings about herself, he was the Master. And they were glad to have the painting.

In his portraits of men, he showed the same personal examination. In Lord Ribblesdale, who Edward VII called the “ancestor,” Sargeant painted not just a figure of the English aristocracy, but of an era on it’s way out. The Queen’s former “Keeper of the Hounds,”(whose portrait Sargeant pursued at no fee), lost that hereditory title and power as aristocrats’ status were reduced by the ascendency of the House of Commons. Sargeant took a hereditory costume and modernized it, when the bottom garment might have appeared ridiculous.

John D. Rockefeller Lord Ribblesdale

An interesting contrast is the very relaxed, workman-like appearance of the American mogul, John D. Rockefeller in his portrait. The face and hands are strong, alert.

Dr. Pozzi at Home caused a small scandal for dressing a doctor so flamboyantly! Interestingly,

he wears a pre-made garment. In a similar way, the actress Ellen Terry’s portrait is one of the few examples of a sitter in her own costume. This one, made from beetle wings, had no equal, like the “immortal” actress.

Dr. Pozzi at Home

Ellen Terry as Lady McBeth

Sargent actually stopped painting portraits and pursued landscapes. Here is his own self-portrait. And an oil painting made of Capri. Wish I was there. But his journey through this book is fabulous.

S.W.

Source: http://notanotherbookreview.blogspot.com/2024/01/great-american-painting-from-winslow.html

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