CHAPTER THIRTEEN GENIUS IN ABUNDANCE Paris! We are here! ... We feel our speechlessness keenly . .. -ROBERT HENRI 'i I Ilil :1,11 II , I When Mary Cassatt made her debut as an Impressionist at the opening 1111 of the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1879, she was thirty­ four years old. John Sargent, then at the start of his career, was her junior by eleven years. Cassatt's family was still with her in Paris and to a large ,.:II'\1, degree her life remained centered around them. Sargent's family, on the I III other hand, had resumed their nomadic ways, departing Paris late in 1878 for Savoy, then Nice, leaving John to fend for himself. The Impressionist Exhibition opened on Apri110 at a gallery on the avenue de l'Opera. Cassatt had eleven paintings and pastels on display, including her portrait of her sister Lydia, Woman Reading. A few weeks later Sargent's first major portrait, of his teacher Carolus-Duran, could be seen at the Paris Salon. The work of both Americans received warm acclaim. tiThe Woman Reading . .. is a miracle of simplicity and elegance," said one review. Mademoiselle Cassatt and Monsieur Degas were /tperhaps the only artists 387 • THE GREATER JOURNEY' 389 388 • DAVID MCCULLOUGH· who distinguished themselves in this group," said another critic who in Most of the summer of 1877 he spent at the small Breton port of general looked askance on Impressionists. Cancale. The next summer he traveled to Naples, then sailed to Capri be­ Sargent's Carolus-Duran received an honorable mention at the Salon, fore returning to Nice to be with his family. In the summer of 1879 he went overland to Madrid to copy masterworks at the Prado Museum, as I! and much approval from the public and critics. uThere was always a little ,II crowd around it, and I overheard constantly remarks of its excellence," urged by Carolus-Duran. From Madrid he moved on to Granada, then I wrote his father, who had made a return visit to Paris for the occasion. Morocco and Tunis. Iii "No American had ever painted with such quiet mastery ... equaling The steady production of work resulting from these expeditions was the French on their own ground," declared an American review. uThere is phenomenal. He found interest in everything. At Cancale he sketched II no feebleness, no strain, no shortcoming in the art ... it is alive." and painted studies of oyster gatherers on the beach-women with large , I!: May Alcott of Boston, who was studying art in Paris and had made a baskets and the children who accompanied them-and produced three ' II major canvases on the subject. He did ships and boats, boatmen and \ conscientious effort to see nearly everything by Americans shown at the III ,I galleries and the Salon, concluded that, were one to leave out the work of wharf scenes in both oil and watercolor. He painted portraits and studies ofwomen in Capri, children bathing on the shore, olive groves, and more I Ill! Sargent, women clearly ranked first among American painters, with Mary than a few of an especially beautiful model named Rosina in silhouette I Cassatt at the forefront. Miss Alcott, who was the sister of Louisa May III' Alcott, would write: dancing on the white rooftops. 'I At the Prado he devoted weeks to painting a copy of the Velazquez " III ' I If Mr. John Sargent be excepted, whose portrait of Carolus­ masterpiece Las Meninas. He did pencil, ink, and oil sketches of Spanish Duran alone undoubtedly places him in the first rank ofpaint­ dancers and musicians in Madrid, and at Granada, luminous watercolors ers, there is no other male student from the United States in ofthe architectural details ofthe Alhambra. In Morocco he painted street Paris today exhibiting in his pictures the splendid coloring scenes, mosques, and Berber women wearing their haiks. always found in the work of Miss Cassatt of Philadelphia.... No subject seemed to daunt him. Once back in Paris, he undertook scenes out in the city itself, something very few American painters had yet attempted. Two brilliant black and white oil paintings of the Pasdeloup 'I With their upper-class demeanor, fluency in French, general sophisti­ I cation, and extraordinary talent, Cassatt and Sargent had a great deal in Orchestra in rehearsal at the Cirque d'Hiver amphitheater on the rue common, despite the differences in gender and age. They lived and worked Amelot left no doubt of his amazing virtuosity. A scene of a couple stroll­ in the same city-oftheir own choice and for many ofthe same reasons­ ing in the Luxembourg Gardens at twilight, which he painted twice, and Sargent, with some of his fellow students, had met Cassatt sometime evoked the romantic spell of Paris as few works ever had. And he was only I,. in the 1870S. But they had no more than a passing acquaintance and their getting started. lives remained worlds apart. He and Carroll Beckwith continued to share the studio apartment at Where Cassatt's days were confined almost entirely to her studio and 73 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and counted French as well as Ameri­ the fifth-floor family residence on the avenue Trudaine, life for young can painters among their ucircle," including Paul Helleu from Brittany, Sargent was as free as it had ever been. He had a number of compan­ who introduced Sargent to Claude Monet. ionable friends and was frequently off and about, at times traveling more Unlike Mary Cassatt, Sargent had no impulse to embrace the Impres­ even than his parents, with the difference that he kept working wherever sionist mode, nor would he allow himselfto be so classified, as much as he he was. admired the work of Monet, Manet, and others. It was to portraits above I I I 390 • DAVID McCULLOUGH' • THE GREATER JOURNEY' 391 all that he devoted the most time and effort and that were rapidly bringing She was as much a whirlwind talker as he, and the tt dabs and blurs" him attention and increasing income. caught the animation of her chattering face, the glints of light from her He painted his American student friends Ralph Curtis, Francis Chad­ eyeglasses and uneven teeth. It was, she conceded, ttmore like me than I wick, and Gordon Greenough. Paul Helleu-Iean, dark, and a lifelong expected anything could [be]-rather fierce and cantankerous." friend-seemed never to tire of posing for him. fitzWilliam Sargent sat Greatly as they enjoyed each other's company, Sargent and Vernon Lee for his melancholy portrait, and the French playwright Edouard Pailleron rarely talked about art. As a writer and critic, she had become interested became the first full-fledged patron, commissioning not only a portrait of in the Happlication to art of psychological research." But like Augustus himself but two more of his wife and children. Saint-Gaudens, Sargent wished only to be spared such talk. ttIn his eyes," But it was the portrait of Carolus-Duran that launched Sargent's ca­ she later wrote, Hall this was preposterous, and I suspect, vaguely sacrile­ reer, just as he hoped it would, and intrinsic to its appeal was an unmis­ gious." And she went further: takable feeling for the theatrical that was to characterize his strongest, most arresting works to follow. Now, as I declined to yield to my dear old playfellow's dicta­ So relaxed, confident, almost flippant was the pose struck by Carolus­ tion on this subject, and failed to make him recognize that Duran, he might well have been seated downstage at the footlights about art could afford to other folk problems quite apart from those to deliver an entertaining soliloquy, or produce a rabbit out of a hat. He dealt with by the artist and the art critic; as, moreover, Sar­ looks at the viewer straight on, as though his dark eyes never blinked. An gent did not like opposition nor I dogmatism, a tacit under­ actor assigned to play the part would have only to look at the painting to standing henceforth kept us off anything which might lead to know what to do. either. So our conversation turned more and more to books, lt was seeing the portrait of Carolus-Duran that led playwright Pail­ music and people, about all of which John Sargent was a de­ leron to ask Sargent to paint him in a comparable pose. Sargent's brush­ lightful talker and an often delighted listener. work and use of a dark background to accentuate his subjects in both portraits were unmistakably in the manner taught by Carolus-Duran, yet Word spread that he made sitting for a portrait highly pleasurable, and ,I, still more an expression of Sargent's own genius for catching the essence affluent women in increasing numbers wished to do so. Among them were , I~ I~ ofthe subject with only a few, seemingly effortless brush strokes. Eleanor Jay Chapman and her sister Beatrix, the daughters of a New York I" A small, candid portrait done in London the next year, 1881, of an stockbroker, and Madame Ramon Subercaseaux, the wife of the Chilean American novelist and essayist, Vernon Lee, was another virtuoso perfor­ consul in Paris, who later described going with her husband to Sargent's mance. lt was a brilliant likeness that appeared to have been captured in a studio and finding it, to their surprise, Hvery poor and bohemian while the artist himself seemed a very attractive gentleman," though ttvery young." ,II 'I flash, without a moment's hesitation. Vernon Lee was the pen name ofViolet Paget.