Just finished reading an interesting blog post from May 31st about Sargent's Daughters of Edward Boit at this link (Alchemist's Pillow) so I've been thinking about how difficult it is to capture a likeness, especially with just a few strokes. This is Two Women by Iraqi painter Faik Hassan.

Others have pointed to Bonnard and Picasso as artistic influences (see Art, edited by Robert Benton, p. 273), and that makes sense to me, but what I am amazed by is the ability to nail down these portraits with a few tones and a few swipes of paint. I've been struggling this morning with a face for a commission, wiping it off, starting over again, and so on, and then I open this book and see these two.

Well, he did win a scholarship to go to Paris during the 30s and study at the École des Beaux Arts. (That little piece is missing from my backgound, alas.) Upon his return to Iraq, he established and led the painting and sculpture department of the Institute of Fine Art. In addition to landscapes and portraiture, Hassan also created a large mural in Tiran Square as one of a number of projects he worked on to serve his country. He died in 1992.

Here's one I like from the Dijla Gallery.

Unfortunately, the title is not posted, but it is oil on canvas. Monochromatic scheme works for me, and besides, I've always liked nun paintings. Time for a shrink?

It's always fun to come across a painting you don't know well that has a connection to one of your favorites. While we've all seen this oil, Breakfast in the Loggia, a dozen times in anthologies with its perfect rendering of light and shadow, I had not realized 'til yesterday that Sargent had painted the same two women in watercolor. Below is The Garden Wall; I came across it in Awash in Color, by Reed and Troyen. I learned that the subjects of both paintings are Jane Emmet von Glehn (later de Glehn), an accomplished painter and wife of painter Wilfred von Glehn and on the right, Lady Richmond, wife of the artist Sir William Blake Richmond. (p.163)

They traveled often with Sargent and his sisters; these works depict their lodgings at a friend's villa near Florence. (Now why don't I have any friends with villas?) The author points out that Sargent enjoyed experimenting with compositions that might create a bit a narrative, but never provides too much info.

He places these figures just far enough apart that there is a bit of spatial tension, isn't there? We are not given clues to what might be discussed between them, but the face of Lady Richmond on the right does make you wonder if she has just stopped reading her book in order to make a remark or reply to something Jane has said. It's commonplace for an artist to try to engage the viewer in 2010. Not sure how often that strategy was employed a hundred years ago. Do you know?

The other bit of info we'll never have is whether or not he intended for this to look so unfinished, with that wonderful sketched-in wall behind the left hand figure. And that shawl he has is rendered in such detail it almost becomes the focal point. All those decisions about the attitude of the figure, the mood - and Sargent seems to nail them with such confidence. Just another day's work for him, I guess.

Solvitur ambulando . . It is solved by walking. . St. Augustine

Augustine may not have been the first to say this, but the words are often attributed to him.

I first heard this at Loyola from a Jesuit priest who explained that there were a number of paradoxes from the time of Aristotle that puzzled philosophers and mathematicians for centuries. One such paradox states that "that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal." (from Aristotle.) You can always divide a number in half, and so no matter what distance you have traveled, you will always have half that distance to go before you reach your destination. The paradox is refuted by contradiction: solve it by walking. Above is Sargent's Campo San Agnese, Venice with a lot of walkers, almost ghostly ones.

It certainly seems that I will never cover the distance, never finish the press releases, never re-size the images, never get the hanging wire on the last painting, and so on. Who doesn't feel this way? What else can you do but just push on, working as much as you can to halve the distance?

Apparently John Singer Sargent was capable of working for incredibly long stretches, "literally all day till the light failed." His sister's friend Eliza Wedgwood says "I was the drone of the party, but allowed to sit and watch John for hours at a time: I don't think he was conscious of my presence. . .he was so absorbed in his work that he was oblivious of all else. . . it was such an experience to see him paint, every stroke telling." (from Sargent in Italy, edited by Bruce Robertson.)

Yesterday as I rushed down from my studio to make lunches before school, I fell down the stairs, quite a lot of them. . . so maybe it's solve it by walking slowly.

A painting by John Singer Sargent that looks spontaneous and rushed but probably took some planning:

A portrait is a likeness in which there is something wrong with the mouth." J.S. Sargent

Years ago my artist father quoted Sargent and whenever I recall these words, I feel a little less bad about my attempts. I remember a teacher at UCLA suggesting years ago that I throw the entire face of my subject into shadow.

Sometimes when I see the finished works of someone as immensely talented as Sargent I forget about the periods of infrequent commissions, the criticism that he was merely clever, and most of all, the huge amount of time he spent wrestling with the paint.

I keep taking out Carter Ratcliff's Sargent from the library because it's so full of background. Ratcliff talks about all the work that went into the infamous portrait, Madame Gautreau. He worked and reworked the canvas, explaining:

One day I was dissatisfied with it and dashed a tone of light rose over the former gloomy background. I turned the painting upside down, retired to the other end of the studio and looked at it under my arm. Vast improvement.

Here it is at left, a copy Sargent made that he never finished.

Of course, the one he did finish kicked up a firestorm of protest, including this from the subject's mother: "All Paris is making fun of my daughter. She is ruined. My people will be forced to defend themselves. She'll die of chagrin."

It was called "monstrous," "detestable." But his stongest defender, Louis de Fourcaud, had this to say: "The purity of his model's lines must strike one first of all. From head to toe, the form 'draws' itself - in one stroke, it becomes a harmony of lines."

Since I do not have his eye or hand, I have to grasp at the straws of technique. More than just about any other technique, I find the turn-it-upside-down idea very helpful, but not just with seeing the composition more clearly. From a different vantage point, your eye cannot quietly correct a flaw or supply what it believes ought to be there - you really do see the work more plainly. Have you tried painting while it is still upside down or sideways? Does it help? And what about the mouth? Is it harder than any other feature to capture well? My father, George, tells me the nose has its problems, too.