e almost the full measure of this admirable peculiarity,
that perception with him is already by itself a kind of execution. It
is likewise so, of course, with many another genuine painter; but in
Sargent's case the process by which the object seen resolves itself into
the object pictured is extraordinarily immediate. It is as if painting
were pure tact of vision, a simple manner of feeling.

From the time of his first successes at the Salon he was hailed, I
believe, as a recruit of high value to the camp of the Impressionists,
and to-day he is for many people most conveniently pigeon-holed under
that head. It is not necessary to protest against the classification
if this addition always be made to it, that Mr. Sargent's impressions
happen to be worthy of record. This is by no means inveterately the case
with those of the ingenuous artists who most rejoice in the title in
question. To render the impression of an object may be a very fruitful
effort, but it is not necessarily so; that will depend upon what, I
won't say the object, but the impression, may have been. The talents
engaged in this school lie, not unjustly, as it seems to me under
the suspicion of seeking the solution of their problem exclusively in
simplification. If a painter works for other eyes as well as his own he
courts a certain danger in this direction--that of being arrested by the
cry of the spectator: "Ah! but excuse me; I myself take more impressions
than that" We feel a synthesis not to be an injustice only when it is
rich. Mr. Sargent simplifies, I think, but he simplifies with style, and
his impression is the finest form of his energy.

His work has been almost exclusively in portraiture, and it has been his
fortune to paint more women than men; therefore he has had but a limited
opportunity to reproduce that generalized grand air with which his view
of certain figures of gentlemen invests the model, which is conspicuous
in the portrait of Carolus Duran and of which his splendid "Docteur
Pozzi," the distinguished Paris surgeon (a work not sent to the Salon),
is an admirable example. In each of these cases the model has been of
a gallant pictorial type, one of the types which strike us as made
for portraiture (which is by no means the way of all), as especially
appears, for instance, in the handsome hands and frilled wrists of M.
Carolus, whose cane rests in his fine fingers as if it were the hilt
of a rapier. The most brilliant of all Mr. Sargen