On John Singer Sargent and Velazquez… Las Meninas Part 3

John Singer Sargent, an American ex-patriot, lived quite the life…

Sargent was born in Florence in 1856, and during his sixty-nine years he travelled extensively throughout Europe, when, for Americans, it was still mostly terra incognita . It can fairly be said of Spain (where he visited seven times), and, more pointedly, of Velazquez, that they changed him. He first came to the country in 1879, when he was 23 years old, and almost immediately he plopped himself down in front of the great Velasquez paintings in the Prado.

Though Las Meninas was several hundred years old when Sargent first took sight of it, it was still incredibly modern. Velazquez’s restrained palette, bold brushwork, astonishingly complex compositions, and affection for naturalism altered the trajectory of his style forever.

For Sargent, and many others, discovering the great Spanish painter, broke the stranglehold that French styles and tastes had on artistic expression. Initially, he was a copyist of Velazquez. One can imagine the young artist sitting in front of Las Meninas, and his other great works in The Prado, for hours on end trying to work the puzzle out. How did he so cleverly place the figures in the space of the painting? Or, trying to imagine, in amazement, from where the power of those brushstrokes came?

It must have been a labor of exhilarating enlightenment and intense frustration. So, what was the impact of these instructions from Velazquez?

Well, let’s start with the work of Sargent as a copyist in 1879. Below is his work called The Infanta Margarita After Velasquez…

Or these paintings of The Crucifixion. First, the original by Velazquez from 1632…

And now, by Sargent just after he came to The Prado in 1879…

But perhaps the most important connection between these two artists is in Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (originally titled Portraits d'enfants). The painting depicts four young girls, the daughters of Edward Darley Boit, in their family's Paris apartment. It was painted in 1882 and is now exhibited in the new Art of the Americas Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

This beautiful, and somewhat haunting, portrait, painted in 1882, just three years after Sargent first encountered Velazquez, clearly seems to harken directly back to Las Meninas in its theme, composition, brushwork, and restrained used of color.

Sargent combined the techniques he learned from Velazquez with his classical French training, to develop his own unique style. He became a world renowned portraitist, and is widely considered the greatest American painter of the nineteenth century.

Each day, as I travel on this journey to discover the great Velazquez, I am amazed by the power of his work, and the influence it had on so many modern artists.

To be continued…