in bows, has an
old-fashioned air, as if it had been worn by some demure princess who
might have sat for Velasquez. The hair, of which the arrangement is odd
and charming, is disposed in two or three large curls fastened at one
side over the temple with a comb. Behind the figure is the vague faded
sheen, exquisite in tone, of a silk curtain, light, undefined, and
losing itself at the bottom. The face is young, candid and peculiar. Out
of these few elements the artist has constructed a picture which it is
impossible to forget, of which the most striking characteristic is
its simplicity, and yet which overflows with perfection. Painted with
extraordinary breadth and freedom, so that surface and texture are
interpreted by the lightest hand, it glows with life, character and
distinction, and strikes us as the most complete--with one exception
perhaps--of the author's productions. I know not why this representation
of a young girl in black, engaged in the casual gesture of holding up
a flower, should make so ineffaceable an impression and tempt one to
become almost lyrical in its praise; but I remember that, encountering
the picture unexpectedly in New York a year or two after it had been
exhibited in Paris, it seemed to me to have acquired an extraordinary
general value, to stand for more artistic truth than it would be easy to
formulate. The language of painting, the tongue in which, exclusively,
Mr. Sargent expresses himself, is a medium into which a considerable
part of the public, for the simple an excellent reason that they don't
understand it, will doubtless always be reluctant and unable to follow
him.

Two years before he exhibited the young lady in black, in 1879, Mr.
Sargent had spent several months in Spain, and here, even more than he
had already been, the great Velasquez became the god of his idolatry.
No scenes are more delightful to the imagination than those in which
we figure youth and genius confronted with great examples, and if such
matters did not belong to the domain of private life we might entertain
ourselves with reconstructing the episode of the first visit to the
museum of Madrid, the shrine of the painter of Philip IV., of a
young Franco-American worshipper of the highest artistic sensibility,
expecting a supreme revelation and prepared to fall on his knees. It is
evident that Mr. Sargent fell on his knees and that in this attitude he
passed a considerable part of his sojourn in Spain. He is vari