A magic moment in the gruesome history of portrait sculpture

The relationship between a great artist and his sitters is a poignant one. But what they say to each other during the long periods of concentrated stillness, on the one hand, and frenzied search for a likeness, on the other, is seldom recorded. We do not know what Leonardo said to the Mona Lisa to evoke her Giaconda Smile. Or what Vermeer, a shadowy figure at all times, told the girl with the pearl earring, to fix her mood of heart-catching, pensive beauty. One feels that Vermeer was as gentle as the touch of his brush, and spoke in barely audible whispers. He was, I think, nervous and easily upset in his work, one reason why he never painted children, though he had 14 of his own (and left them badly provided for, alas). Franz Hals liked to swear and joke, one reason his subjects often laughed, unusual in those days. John Singer Sargent was hugely successful with women because he put them at their ease, made them feel wanted and beautiful, but also comfy in their pose. But what did he say to Lord Ribblesdale to turn him into the epitome of English aristocratic pride and nonchalance, at the climax of our imperial splendour? His Lordship was a modest man and rather nervous at being Sargent’s victim. He was later astonished at the reactions to this famous full-length, ‘which seduced the ladies and scared the gentlemen’. Sir Thomas Lawrence did all the great men of his time (Napoleon alone excepted) from the Tsar to the Pope, and was evidently a great chatter-up of sitters, and clever at eliciting information, including state secrets, from them. Many of his studio exchanges are recorded in the diaries of Joseph Farington RA, his close friend.

Just occasionally we get an isolated blow-by-blow account of sittings between a major artist and an outstanding sitter.