Word: sargent
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Robert Henri was not an elegant, sensational painter like the late John Singer Sargent, nor a trenchant controversialist like the late Joseph Pennell. Insurgent, he did not crusade. He taught instead. Born in Cincinnati of French-English-Irish descent, he studied at the Pennsylvania and Julien (Paris) Academies, at the Paris Beaux-Arts. French precision and orthodoxy never made him feel com fortable. Strolling the corridors of the Louvre, he revered Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, but was long unable to evolve con victions of his own. Like most fine artists, he remained, even after success, a student of the masters...
...regard to the question you ask as to the John Sargent's War pictures in the Harvard Library, my recollection is that they are in a style and in a vehicle rather more suited to the magazine cover and to the poster than to a university library. And as to their sentiment,--perhaps they do recall the fierce antagonism of the great war. Nevertheless I do not favor removing them. The habit of pulling down monuments has in it something of the childish. Why not let the decorations stand for what they are worth and for the epoch they record...
...Sargent and the Warepoch he speaks for be damned or be praised in the future. You won't better matters by expunging records. They may signify something that you haven't thought of. Yours sincerely, John Jay Chapman...
...Late John Singer Sargent's talents are often flayed by modern estbetes who believe much of his painting is mere pomp and polish. Last week the undergraduate editors of the Harvard Crimson assailed Artist Sargent from another angle. Discussing his martial murals (one of which shows a U. S. soldier standing on a prostrate German) in the Widener Library they said: "Critics have shown them to be indefensible on grounds esthetic: War posters raised to the rank of mural decoration. But it is not their ugliness which would trouble the sensitive visitor. . . . [They] are out of place...
...need of 1917 melodramatic chauvinism has vanished with the peace of 1918, and the binding of international good-will has rendered unnecessary any further reminders of war-time animosity. If the Sargent murals ever had a purpose, it has been rendered a nullity by universal misconception and unsatisfied curiosity. J. H. Selvidge...