Art Direction.

This painting by Sargent is one of my favourite portraits. Portraiture is notoriously difficult, as human faces are the thing that we see the most, so it is very obvious when one is painted incorrectly, or the likeness of the model is incorrect.

Having read the Art Spirit, by Robert Henri (The leading figure of the school of American realism.) my eyes have been opened to some of the many philosophies of painting. Considering things talked about in this book really makes you appreciate good art. Henri discussed such topics as brush economy, colour harmony and the relationship between colour and form.

The Piece appears very monotone, using only orange and brown hues, even for the suggestion of the background. No colour seems out of place, even the very saturated tones of the face where the light hits are not harsh in appearance. These bright colours are surrounded by their complementary colours:

Above is the actual colour of the darkest part of her hair. Sargent has very cleverly chosen to place a warm light brown next to a dark saturated purple to create contrast in value and colour, even if we don’t recognise the colour as being purple at first glance. This is one of the ways Sargent managed to create such harmony and ‘wholeness’ in his work, while still maintaining a painterly and expressive feel. (This is an example of colour harmony.)

The edges of the face are very well considered, in order to capture her likeness and personality. If I zoom in further, you can clearly see the variation in hard and soft edges around different areas of the face.

(Hard edges describe the point where two planes meet eachother, while soft edges describe the soft transition of one edge into another. I made the little example to make more sense.)

If a painting has too many of one kind of edge it can look flat and boring. One of the keys to a good painting is to create contrast in many different ways. Having contrasting edges in a painting is very important in leading the eye around, and helping the viewer to understand the forms of the painting better.

Above I have labelled where some examples of good edges are. Typically, the female face has more soft edges than the male face, but it does not contain ONLY soft edges. This is another area where Sargent’s work is really impressive. The few hard edges in this painting are used in places where there would be a sharper transition into another tone, for example on the nose where the light hits it’s side and the contrast between edges in this painting that push the realism in the impression of  this young girl’s face.

It is easy to talk about these things when looking at masters like Sargent and Velazquez, but very difficult to implement into your own work without a lot of practice. I find studying from paintings like this to be incredibly valuable, and every study I do I feel further develops my understanding of painting realism.