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Home , Anders Zorn, John Singer Sargent

Masters of

John Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla, Anders Zorn, and their influence on realist painters today

By Norma n Kolpas

John Singer Sargent, , 1882, oil on canvas, 91 x 137, Museum, Boston (P7s1).  John Singer Sargent, Carolus-Duran, 1879, oil on canvas, 46 x 38, Clark Institute, 1955.14.

“If ever a painter wrought a miracle visits to museums where canvases by Michelle Dunaway, Hiu Lai Chong, and book John Singer Sargent: The Sensualist. “He of illusion with brush and pigment,” ob- past masters could be studied up close. Daniel Gerhartz—who are particularly jabbed, dabbed, smeared, slapped, and served early 20th-century Spanish art- All that dedicated study of the past inspired by the masters’ work. scratched his paint surfaces; he deployed ist Joaquín Sorolla, “that painter was had changed quite a bit by the mid- brilliant, murky, flashy, peculiar, and Velázquez in his , at the 20th century. Modern art movements ravishing colours.” Prado in Madrid.” like and abstract expression- John Singer Sargent: The early development of Sargent’s Sorolla, like so many painters work- ism strained ties with the past, and the A Sensual Technician singular style came in large part through ing in the European realist traditions works of the historical masters were of- Born to American parents but raised in his expatriate parents. His father, an eye that ruled the world of western art until ten dismissed as mere illustration. Europe, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) surgeon and adept medical illustrator, the 20th century, looked respectfully to But in recent decades, masters from became the most celebrated portraitist and his mother, an accomplished ama- past masters for technical guidance and the last great heyday of realism have of his day, and his bold, mostly life-size, teur painter, recognized the rambunc- aesthetic inspiration. Indeed, through- gained serious new regard from schol- and often full-length figurative works tious boy’s talent at a young age and in- out most of art history, aspiring artists ars and curators. And they have inspired endure today for their striking poses and troduced him, in great museums across studied the works of those who had countless artists who are part of the cur- compositions, evocative lighting, and Europe, to masterpieces by the likes of come before them. The in which rent resurgence of appreciation for real- bravura paint application. “His images , , and . they learned and refined their skills em- ist art. Here we take a look at three such present a vibrant, forceful realism while From his late teens to early 20s, he stud- phasized techniques and compositional masters: John Singer Sargent, Anders subtly projecting emotions, desires, and ied in the prestigious École des Beaux- styles developed by their forebears. And Zorn, and Joaquín Sorolla. We also talk intuitions as their visual subtext,” ob- in while also being mentored an artistic education routinely included to three contemporary realist painters— served critic Trevor Fairbrother in his in the of the respected young

Featured in Visit subscribenow.southwestart.com rative painter in Kewaskum, WI, drew century socialites and collectors on both had little reason to feel anything like a similar inspiration from Sargent’s EL sides of the Atlantic who vied for por- second-tier talent. Raised on a farm, he JALEO in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gard- traits by leading painters of the era (Zorn went on to become a teen prodigy at ner Museum. The large, moody oil of a worked in Paris for many years, and ’s Royal of gypsy dancer, he says, “has always haunt- made seven trips to the ) Arts. Known at first for his luminous ed me. The composition is so strong, just deemed the Swedish artist a rival of watercolor works, he began to gain por- an abstract light-and-dark pattern that the American’s. The two men were even trait commissions for Swedish socialites. directs your eye exactly where he wants once pitched directly in competition by Demand for Zorn portraits grew even it to go.” Gerhartz particularly seeks to American railway tycoon Edward Rath- greater when he began to master oils. emulate Sargent’s “ability to capture bone Bacon, who in 1897 challenged Zorn His works won acclaim in Paris, where tone, his mastery of value control, and to paint a better portrait of his sister-in- he and his wife, Emma, lived for eight his color temperatures,” he says. “He law, Mrs. Walter Rathbone Bacon, than years. Soon members of the internation- was just head and shoulders above most the one Sargent had recently completed. al elite were clamoring for portraits by artists of his day.” Zorn later proudly recounted that when Zorn, captivated by his ability to capture Sargent viewed the Swede’s rendition at not just the likenesses but also the per- that year’s Paris , he admitted Zorn sonalities of his subjects, which includ- Anders Zorn: had “won a brilliant victory.” ed ’s King Oscar II and Queen A Nuanced Palette As that self-aggrandizing anecdote Sophia, and U.S. presidents Taft, Cleve- Compared to Sargent’s present renown, might suggest, Zorn may have felt over- land, and . the name Anders Zorn (1860-1920) is shadowed by his contemporary’s greater Apart from those brilliantly executed decidedly less familiar. But late-19th- acclaim. But in his heyday, the Swede but still fairly conventional works, Zorn

Michelle Dunaway, Her Mother’s Locket, oil, 20 x 16. Anders Zorn, Self-Portrait With , 1896, oil, 46 x 37, Nationalmuseum Stockholm.

Parisian portraitist Carolus-Duran, who home for the rest of his life, his base for Dunaway when she first encountered emphasized to his students the alla prima creating images of illustrious Britons portraits by Sargent in the American approach— spontaneously on and Americans, including presidents wing of New York’s Metropolitan Mu- the canvas directly from life, without Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wil- seum of Art as a young student the classical traditions of first executing son. After turning 51, however, he closed in her early 20s. “Across the room, you’d careful compositional underpaintings his studio and devoted the fi- feel like you were looking at a real per- on the canvas. nal 18 years of his life largely to water- son,” she remembers. “But up close, they At the age of 23, Sargent burst into colors inspired by his travels in Britain, awoke the technician in me with their the public eye, exhibiting a widely ad- Europe, North Africa, and the Middle fluid brushwork and color notes.” mired portrait of his teacher Carolus- East, as well as inside Boston’s In 2013, Dunaway experienced a par- Duran. Commissions soon followed, Museum of Fine Arts and Public Library ticular closeness to Sargent’s portrait of and one of them, his PORTRAIT OF MA- and Harvard’s . The MRS. EDWARD DARLEY BOIT in Boston’s DAME X—a highly sensual depiction of a past three decades have seen major in- Museum of Fine Art. “They let me do a pale-skinned young socialite in a bare- ternational museum retrospectives of study from life of the hands in the por- shouldered, -revealing black Sargent’s work, and today he is widely trait,” she says. “I learned so much from gown—created such a scandal that he considered a virtuoso talent. Sargent about color mixtures, design, eventually decamped to London. That That virtuosity captivated 43-year-old and composition.” city became the celebrated painter’s Albuquerque-based portraitist Michelle Daniel F. Gerhartz, a 51-year-old figu- Anders Zorn, Emma Zorn, Läsande, 1887, oil, 16 x 24, Zorn Collections, Mora, Sweden.

Featured in Visit subscribenow.southwestart.com continued to set himself technical chal- scape and figurative artist based in writer and actor COQUELIN CADET. That’s something I try to capture in my lenges. Fascinated with light, the art- Rockville, MD. “Zorn often used a lim- Just as eye-opening for artists working work as well,” Dunaway says. ist launched into extensive works in oil ited palette, with black and white and today is Zorn’s often boldly asymmetric Chong also finds inspiration in Zorn’s that explored the female figure in red and yellow ochre, which can cre- approach to composition and design. Du- dramatic placement of figures in a scene, a watery outdoor setting and others de- ate beautiful harmony in a painting,” naway says she’s particularly taken with as in his painting VALSEN, which depicts picting figurative scenes presented with she says. Gerhartz agrees, noting that the portrait EMMA ZORN, LÄSANDE, a a formally dressed couple at a ball waltz- dramatic contrasts of bright light and Zorn’s ability to model the form with domestic scene in which the artist’s wife ing on the borderline between a shad- deep shadow. Even more than Zorn’s so few colors “challenges me to paint casually reads the newspaper, which oc- owy anteroom and a brightly lit grand portraits, these genre continue with less rather than more color to cupies as much of the canvas as does her salon. “His sense of movement is just to be studied by scholars and admired see what nuance and subtlety you can figure. I “ love the rhythmical elements amazing,” Chong says. by artists at work today. gain.” He especially recalls being im- of the newspaper that bring your eye up They certainly fascinate and inspire pressed by Zorn’s SELF-PORTRAIT WITH to her face. It feels like you’re getting to Hiu Lai Chong, a 40-year-old land - MODEL and by his portrait of the French witness a transitory moment in time. Joaquín Sorolla: A Grand-Scale Colorist In the early years of the 20th century, Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) was the world’s most celebrated living Spanish artist, a renown that was eclipsed with the rise, just before , of a modernist upstart named Pablo Picasso. Born in the eastern coastal town of Va- lencia, Sorolla was raised by his aunt and uncle, who saw to it that the tal- ented youngster received training from local painters. At 18, he moved to Ma- drid, studying masters like Velázquez and Goya in the Prado; after completing military service at age 22, he won a four- year scholarship to the Spanish Academy in Rome. Sorolla first gained major recogni- tion at 29 with his painting ANOTHER MARGUERITE, depicting a fallen wom - Hiu Lai Chong, Sunset Race, oil, 24 x 24. an, handcuffed and seated on a bench while two constables stand watch. The subject spoke to modern times, but the somber palette and assured rendering evoked past Spanish greats, and the painting won a gold medal at the Na- tional Exhibition in Madrid, then gar- nered first prize at the Chicago Inter- national Exhibition. Soon Sorolla was being heralded in Paris, London, New York, and other art capitals. He trav- eled extensively throughout the United States, holding major shows and exe- cuting elite commissions, including an official portrait of President . The aspect of Sorolla’s work that Joaquín Sorolla, La Playa de Valencia (The Beach at Valencia), 1908, oil, 20 x 26. garnered the most attention was his radiant use of color. “Nature, the sun itself, produces color effects instanta- neously,” he observed. “The impression Sorolla knew how to make his colors sing, sometimes using beautiful grays of these evanescent visions is what we “ make desperate attempts to catch and and blues to make brighter colors pop out even more.” —Hiu Lai Chong fix by any means at hand.” The sense of Daniel Gerhartz, In the Company of Kids, oil, 30 x 48.

Featured in Visit subscribenow.southwestart.com Dunaway, Chong, Every artist living today stands on the and Gerhartz: Forging Their Own Paths shoulders“ of those who have come before. Each As much as Dunaway, Chong, and Gerhartz credit the knowledge and in- generation expands the language of painting. spiration they derive from past masters like Sargent, Zorn, and Sorolla, each —Michelle Dunaway ” artist’s work stands on its own. Dun- away’s recent portrait of her mentor and friend RICHARD SCHMID, for example, may evoke a lesson learned from Sorol- la’s subject matter, but it also shows the present-day artist’s own warmly at- mospheric use of color and brushwork. Chong’s CITY HALL FOUNTAIN certain- ly owes some of its rendering of wa- tery spray to Sargent’s landscapes and cityscapes, but it also possesses the sure, serene sense of place the Chinese- born artist has achieved in her adopted homeland. And Gerhartz’s THE RESCUE OF COSETTE, depicting a pivotal scene from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, may in- deed, as the artist notes, owe something to brooding works by Zorn in which “figures emerge out of a dark, mysteri- ous background.” And yet, the paint- ing also expresses—through its flashes of lamplight and the luminous face of the child—an all-American sweetness and warmth far removed from brooding Scandinavian climes. After all, as Dunaway concludes and her fellow present-day artists concur, “Every artist living today stands on the shoulders of those who have come be- Joaquín Sorolla, La Bata Rosa (The Pink Robe), oil on canvas, 81 x 50, Michelle Dunaway, The Daughters of Jane Seymour, oil, 30 x 20. fore. There’s an infinite amount to be Sorolla Museum, Madrid. learned from these great masters. We put some of that into our own paintings spontaneity embodied in that statement picting life in Spain’s provinces for the “light just blasts off the canvas. It’s al- and add our own voices. Each generation may have led some critics and observ- walls of a grand room in the Hispanic most as if you have to wear sunscreen expands the language of painting.” E ers, past and present, to label Sorolla an Society of America in Manhattan. to look at it.” Impressionist; but his composition and Sorolla’s methods continue to inspire Gerhartz, Dunaway, and Chong have faithful rendering remained very much realist artists working today. “He knew also found inspiration in the grand those of a realist. how to make his colors sing, some- scale of so many Sorolla works. All Sorolla’s passion for sunlight led him times using beautiful grays and blues three note the impact they felt upon to paint not only landscapes and town- to make brighter colors pop out even witnessing his larger canvases. “I re- scapes but also outdoor portraits— more,” says Chong. Adds Dunaway, member coming home being inspired particularly images of his wife and noting her fondness for LA BATA ROSA, to work on a way bigger scale and see Norman Kolpas is a Los Angeles-based freelancer daughters—with a casual air belying Sorolla’s painting of a young woman what happens,” says Gerhartz. who writes for Mountain Living and Colorado his classical training. His rigorous tech- being helped into a rose-colored robe Dunaway also drew another lesson Homes & Lifestyles as well as Southwest Art. nique served him particularly well as for bathing at the beach: “He would from Sorolla’s images of his homeland. he undertook more ambitious projects, really play color temperatures against “As much as he painted grand subject including grandly scaled paintings that each other, capturing the effect of matter, he would also paint the people See more work at found their apex in a project completed sunlight, how it falls and cascades and places that affected him personally. www.southwestart.com/featured/ shortly before his death: 14 giant mu- across a subject.” Similarly, Gerhartz That really inspired me to want to paint historic-painters-jul2016. rals, totaling 227 feet in length, de- admires SEWING THE SAIL, noting that those that I know and love.” Daniel Gerhartz, The Rescue of Cosette, oil, 48 x 36.

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