"The Greater Journey" [.]

[fiefoe]

Saint-Gaudens's story was better told, but I really picked up the book for Sargent.

• (Sargent's) first memory.. was of a deep red cobblestone in the gutter of the Via Tornabuoni in Florence of a color so beautiful that he thought of it constantly and begged his nurse to take him to see it on their daily walks.
• Sargent would remark of painting, "If you begin with the middle-tone and work up from it towards the darks - so that you deal last with your highest lights and darks - you avoid false accents."
• ("One morning one of us, having no black, used blue instead, and Impressionism was born," Renoir once explained.)
• "You will never find any peace for your soul and mind excepting in work. That is the only true source of our welfare.
• Saint-Gaudens would write of the "toughness" of the sculptor's challenge, all the problems to be dealt with... and "all the while trying to soar into the blue".
• "All my brain can conceive now is arms with braid, legs, coats, eagles, caps, legs, arms, hands, caps, eagles, eagles, caps, and so on;"
• A brilliant likeness (of Vernon Lee) that appeared to have been captured in a flash, without a moment's hesitation.
• ... his rendering of the white pinafores and the decorative pattern of the Japanese vases. He is like a virguoso pianist who, playing rapidly, strikes every key perfectly.  
• (On Madame X:) "Do you object to people who are fardees to the extent of being uniform lavender or blotting paper colour all over? If so you would not care for my sitter. But she has the most beautiful lines and if the lavender or chlorate-of-potash lozenge color be pretty in itself I shall be more than pleased."
• Saint-Gaudens on Rodin's Balzac: "too much the effect of a guttering candle"

<<