ART.
THE WERTHEIMER SARGENTS.
Now that Mr. Sargent has been so conspicuously granted the privileges of the dead at the National Gallery, we can no longer give him the privileges of the living. He stands to be judged by Velasquez and Hals and Rembrandt, his work hangs beside Reynolds and Lawrence. It is only a very tenacious worship of tradition that will deny his superiority to the slick superficiality and the repulsive " pink and whiteness " of Lawrence, but it is foolishness that will attempt to level him with Reynolds. The virility of his brushwork, the comparative solidity of his modelling and the comparative richness of his colour give him an advantage over the one painter, while his uncertainty, his lack of depth and quality keep him well below the other. He never rises to be more than a portrait painter, as Reis and Velasquez could do, or quite shakes himself free from the trammels of his subject. There are nine portraits in Mr. Asher Wert- heimer's gift and they have been admirably hung in Room XXVI. The first impression of the portraits is certainly powerful, but a prolonged examination, a second and third visit, will too surely reveal the inaccuracy under the facile painting. Look, for example, at the boy's hands and the right hand of the girl in the salmon dress in Essie, Ruby and Ferdinand, look at the left lower passage of Mrs. Wertheimer's hair, look at Almina's hand. Perhaps the best piece of painting is the still life in the Mrs. Wertheimer, and there is a certain easy satisfaction in the texture of the dress in Hylda, but there is no body inside it. Only in the portraits of the parents are the bodies really felt under the clothes ; and, perhaps, to some extent, in Ena and Betty. The unfinished portrait of Alfred is a lamentable witness against Mr. Sargent. Those qualities of spontaneity, of freshness, of movement, which we look for in unfinished work are terribly absent. The figure is wooden, the paint horrible. Are all the dash and sparkle of Mr. Sargent's painting added afterwards ? Are we to conclude that, far from being a natural growth, those other paintings are slowly and laboriously made to look dashing ? Is that why the great strokes of the brush, which move so unerringly over the canvas of Rubens hesitate or frankly go the wrong way in the work of the American ? If Mr. Sargent really achieved the feeling of spontaneity in his finished work we should not, except as a matter of technical interest, concern ourselves with how he did it. But when we feel, critically, the shallowness of his finished work we must look for a reason. Is it, then, to be found in this conscious striving after a manner not essentially his own, in a failure to realize his own limitations ? And if Mr. Sargent did not beguile us with a certain measure of brilliant execution, does the portrait of Alfred show us that he would be simply dull ? I am naturally tentative in these suggestions because it is a new experience, at least to me, to consider Mr. Sargent beside the world's greatest painters. Hitherto, we had accepted him as the greatest living portrait painter in England, but that did not compel us to judge him by a very high standard. Therefore, I may seem to have been exces- sively captious in the consideration of what is, after all, a great addition to our national collection. Mrs. Wertheimer is the most profound of the portraits ; its painting, in its comparative restraint, shows a depth of perception which none of the others sounds. The large group, Essie, Ruby and Ferdinand, attracts by its composition, which is sustained in depth as well as in the picture plane, but the faces are insipid. There is a pleasant glow and a successful daring in the colour. Ena and Betty is a more interesting composition. The difficult movement of the design in depth, which is not parallel with the picture plane, is masterly in the upper portion. Unfortunately, the direction of the movement is lost in the lower portion, the result being an awkward dis- connexion. Like the Mrs. Wertheimer, it is a sincere and truly accomplished piece of work. The portrait of the donor,
Mr. Asher Wertheimer, is, as a portrait, simply interesting, but I am considering the pictures here as art and not as docu- ments in psychology. From my point of view it is really hardly superior to the Edward. Its sensationalism is deceptive. While we can retain our respect and admiration for Mr. Sargent's large powers and achievements, we cannot, in the National Gallery, give him the high honour that we gave him
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