Thursday, July 18, 2013

Canal and Sargent's Paughtraits




Three 8x10 pastel and charcoal drawings from the last few days. 

The following quotes are from the Olsen Sargent biography.  Sargent tried to give up portraiture in 1907.  "'No more paughtraits.' he repeated to [Mrs. Curtis's] son, using his individual spelling of the dreaded word, '... I abhor and abjure them and hope never to do another  especially of the Upper Classes.'  To Lady Radnor he was as emphatic: 'Ask me to paint your gates, your fences, your barns, which I should gladly do, but not the human face.'   His disenchantment reached its most cogent form with the terse declaration, 'No more mugs!', and later settled down in the definition he inscribed on the flyleaf of the French edition of reproductions of his work: 'A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.'"

Regarding his Boston Public Library murals:  "When a lady asked Sargent why Jehovah's face was indistinguishable, he reminded her that he had given up portraiture."

Would you be surprised if I told you he didn't understand Van Gogh: "... Van Gogh's 'things look to me like imitations made in corals or glass of objects in a vacuum...'"




2 comments:

SamArtDog said...

An especially fine bunch of drawings, Bob. Such striking greens.

Bob Lafond said...

Sam, Thanks. I did these outside with the temperature reaching 100 degrees. It's one way to find 'true painting'!