A quality of all great art is reticence, something which will never let the master, to whom it is not disastrous to be careless, be so; for carelessness nearly always means over-statement, and exaggeration. Ah! just the qualities if a work of art is to arrest attention in a modern exhibition. A common question at the Royal Academy is "Where are the Sargents?" by some enthusiastic visitor who has passed them several times. No, Sargent's victories do not startle, winged victories do not, but advertisements do.
Sargent was born of American parents in Florence in 1856, and passed his boyhood there. No art, it would seem at first, is further away than his from all the Florentine traditions, and yet in the decorative colour values, which give distinction to his finest works, he is the child of Florence. The Renaissance attitude towards life itself was highly imaginative, so into visionary art reality was carried. Consulting the origin of all their visions, the Florentines returned imaginatively to what was real. It is the beauty of reality which is the fervour of their great designs, and as a humanist, Sargent is their descendant.
When, at the age of nineteen, he came to Paris, he was already, we are told, an artist of promise, and he went to Carolus Duran with youth's conscious, ardent necessity of embracing a fresh view of the world altogether. The lighter touch of Carolus Duran, the worldly painting, the lively art of things living, if a superficial art, was refreshing, no doubt, to one accustomed only to the beautiful memories of ardour expressed five centuries before. And superficiality, demoralising to the superficial, could only give some added swiftness to a brush inclined to halt with too much intensity whilst life, its one enthusiasm, was racing by. He never experimented under Carolus Duran. He was beginning that unerring sensitiveness of painting, which is only learnt by drudgery, the almost luxuriously easy virtuosity, before the acquirement of which, complete freedom of expression cannot begin, or sympathy declare itself as from a well-played instrument.
An artist with individuality is careless of asserting it, and it is perhaps just the one thing in the world which cannot but assert itself. Those who strive for originality through the unaccustomed may without hesitation be put down as those who are without confidence in their own nature. The individuality of Sargent, as striking as any in his day, is unself-consciously expressed. If we could strain from a work of art the self-conscious, which is always the unnatural element, all that ever gave it any force would still be left in it. Submitted to this test, how much so-called originality would crumble, while the individualism of Sargent still remained.