technique. It was this technique which Mr Sargent had the quickness to see be turned to quite other purposes, namely, to the rapid and incisive statement of the main facts of representation For Manet certain relations of tone and colour had a definite aesthetic significance; for Mr Sargent they were merely means to effective representation.
From Manet, too, he picked up ready-made, as it were, certain colour harmonies—a chord of salmon pinks, oyster greys, and celadon greens to which he added, as a kind of universal medium, certain cool brown notes. This chord in all its varieties is adequate to his purposes, but he never shows in his statement the positive conviction of a passionate apprehension. It is part of the generally decorative effect of his presentment. Such, as I understand it, is the art of Mr Sargent, a felicitous application of means to an end quite different from that for which they were originally discovered.
I see that one of my fellow critics says that Mr Sargent has ascended Parnassus so high that all can see him. T think he has got wrong in his topography. It is not Parnassus that Mr Sargent has climbed, but another mountain which frequently gets confused with it when viewed at a distance. This mountain has not yet been named. It is very high and has the advantage of never being lost in cloud as Parnassus frequently is. A number of very celebrated artists sit there, and Mr Sargent takes his place on it perhaps not a very long way below Frans Hals, Van Dyck, and Sir Thomas Lawrence.
If only this mountain could be properly named much confusion would be avoided. I for one should not have had that long misunderstanding with my fellow critics in the early years of this century. Moreover, it would save a painful feeling of injustice which rankles unnecessarily in the hearts of many artists. It ought to be as clearly understood in art as it is in science that those who profess the applied branches of these studies have a right to ten times the salary and far higher honours than those who are obsessed by the love of truth and beauty. The latter must also accept the fact that those who are as pre-eminent in applied art as Mr Sargent, may gain, besides present wealth and fame, almost as much posthumous glory as the true Parnassians.
