Watercolors: Sargent's pictorial diary

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1996 by Carol Troyen

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For Sargent 1909 was a triumphant year. The successful debut of his watercolors in New York was followed by shows at the Royal Academy and New English Art Club in London, and he received the French Order of Merit and the Belgian Order of Leopold. In contrast, 1910 was full of difficulties. The year opened for Sargent with a severe bout of influenza and ended with what for him was an uncharacteristic row with the modernist critic Roger Fry (1866-1934) over the unsanctioned inclusion of Sargent's name among the supporters of the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists, which opened at the Grafton Gallery in London on November 8. From that point on Fry vilified Sargent as the epitome of conservatism, labeling him a superficial, unimaginative painter who saw only "what the average upper-class tourist sees."(8) In fact, Sargent's watercolors were quite modern in their unexpected combination of techniques and their compositional inventiveness. As for exhibiting a tourist vision, no tourist would create a tour de force from laundry flapping on a line [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XIV OMITTED], or focus on an empty stone corridor of a seventeenth-century building when a celebrated courtyard lay just beyond the colonnade [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XII OMITTED].(9)

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In the summer of 1910 Sargent returned to Italy, based this time in Tuscany. He stayed at Torre Galli, a villa near Florence owned by his friend the Marchese Farinola. His entourage there consisted of Emily; the de Glehns; William Blake Richmond (1842-1921), an academic painter, and his wife, Clara Richards Richmond (d. 1915); and Eliza Wedgwood (1859-1947). During his month at Torre Galli Sargent painted several atmospheric views of the Boboli Gardens in Florence, capturing the soft, slanting light and the shadowy outlines of the strolling figures in the late afternoon [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE V OMITTED]. He painted the lush gardens at the Villa di Marlia in Lucca at least three times, stationing himself in a section of the garden that dated from the seventeenth century. In one watercolor he painted the march of clay pots on a balustrade. In another [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VII OMITTED] lemon trees flush into color against a wall of foliage rendered in soothing blues and browns, and statues of reclining river gods preside over a reflecting pool. The third [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE II OMITTED] shows the fiver gods from behind, with light playing over their lumpy silhouettes and casting liquid shadows, mysterious and animate, onto the sandy path.

Most of Sargent's watercolors from these summers are either unpopulated or use figures primarily as small decorative elements. However, in the few where figures are prominent, Sargent frequently wove them into vignettes as emotionally complex and evocative as those invented by his friend Henry James. Ever diplomatic, Sargent rarely gave vent to his feelings, but some of the strain of the house party at Torre Galli may have seeped into The Garden Wall [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IX OMITTED]. Too many painters trying to work while looking over one another's shoulders must have been exasperating at times, and Sargent confided to his friend Vernon Lee (1856-1935), "So many studies have been started here with the Richmonds figuring in corners that I feel tired.(10)

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Watercolors: Sargent's pictorial diary

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1996 by Carol Troyen

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