John Singer Sargent , “ Portrait of Madame X ,”
1884 strokes whose placement and size were the product of tedious trial and error .
Sargent got rich from his “ paughtraits ,” as he contemptuously called them , but he longed for something better . In his fifties , he retired from portraiture and traveled the world , painting watercolors . When war broke out in 1914 , he found himself , and his art , taking a whole new direction . He was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to go to the Western Front and document what he saw . He had a lot to learn about war ( he was surprised to learn they fought battles on Sundays ), and he learned fast . He was deeply moved by the sight of men blinded by mustard gas , being guided to an ambulance . After the war , he painted his last masterpiece , “ Gassed .”
The picture is more than 20 feet wide and mostly in warm browns and greys . A long procession of blinded men leads each other to the right , with only one sighted man as a guide . Around them are dead , wounded , and blinded comrades on the ground . Another procession of blind men walks toward them , and in the distance , some loosely painted men are playing soccer . It ’ s a powerful painting , unsentimentally honoring the wounded men . paid for — everyone looked good when painted by Sargent . Lady Agnew of Lochnaw , sitting off-center in her voluminous satin gown , looks directly at the viewer in a way that seems somehow both inviting and confrontational . Although Sargent spent months on these portraits , he gave the impression of breakneck speed by covering the surface with long confident
Sargent died a few years after completing “ Gassed .” His reputation had already begun to suffer . For most of the 20th century , art critics dismissed him as a hack portraitist who flattered his rich clients and bowled over the art world with his slick , superficial flashiness . Later generations have forgiven him for his society portraits , which even he repudiated , and learned to admire his broad-brush technique , just as they do that of Sargent ’ s idols , Diego Velázquez and Frans Hals . The have come to see him not only as a great artist but — like Whistler and Cassatt — a great American .
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