Sargent and the Sea
Royal Academy, until 26 September
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) is an artist whose name arouses hopes of dazzling technical virtuosity even when his subjects are fairly run-of-the-mill. Famed as a portrait painter, his art (at its finest) has great glamour and stylishness, backed up by exuberant brushwork which can be truly exhilarating. So a summer-themed exhibition of Sargent and the Sea sounds a treat for all: seductive at the very least, and possibly rising to great heights, with all the explosive splendour of Franz Hals crossed with the Impressionists. Sadly, there is little of such pyrotechnics visible in the Academy’s damp squib of a show.
The first impression in the Sackler Galleries is not good: besides a very thin hang of pictures, the exhibition has been overdesigned. The wall colours, for one thing. I had a girlfriend many years ago who insisted that blue and brown did not go together. She was speaking sartorially, but in laying down her law she seemed conveniently to ignore the beauty of a newly ploughed field against a clear sky. I always remember this, probably because I was guilty of wearing blue with brown, and partly because I thought her wrong. When I discovered in more recent years that the artist John Armstrong made a thing of wearing blue and brown together, I at once warmed to him, though this was not the main reason for writing a book about him (published last year by Philip Wilson at £35). Nevertheless, you may imagine that I am predisposed towards the blue/brown combination; not, however, in their current manifestation at the Sackler Galleries.
Deep chocolate mud and pale blue make a curiously cold and somehow callous combination, but they do serve to distract the viewer from the meagre harvest of pictures on the walls, and perhaps that was the intention. The show starts with half-a-dozen small photographs and a wall of maps, together with three pictures (including an undistinguished drawing of an octopus and a starfish) to suggest perhaps that this is an artist we’re dealing with. Moving into the second room we are treated to a painting entitled ‘Atlantic Storm’, and another, rather better, of a ship’s wake. Seafaring (or at least ship-owning) may have been in Sargent’s family for generations, but that doesn’t mean that he could paint the sea convincingly. Too often — as indeed here — his idea of a heavy sea looks more like an Alpine landscape, all snow-girt mountains.
Onward into room 3 for the first dose of figures on beaches, Breton girls rather academically treated. ‘En route pour la pêche’ is supposed to be an important painting, but far more interesting are the dark shapes of ‘Fisherwomen Returning’. A room of drawings offers even slighter diversion (a mere 11 framed works on the walls), but the naked boys on Capri beaches are twee in the extreme. A painting of a fishing boat moored in green-blue waters is far more enticing. In the last room, the lush Venice watercolours redeem the show a little: lovely if crowded compositions, broadly and authoritatively brushed, wet on wet, with some of the verve we’ve been missing in the other rooms. But the best painting here is ‘Whitby Fishing Boats’ (1884), which in its light-transmitting veils of grey bears more than a passing resemblance to Whistler.
The catalogue (published by Yale with the RA, paperback, £16.95) makes a more convincing argument than the exhibition. (Sargent is one of those artists whose work reproduces well — sometimes appearing better than in the flesh.) I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this show, but it seems to promise more than it supplies. I hope that not too many visitors will feel short-changed.
The other exhibition at the RA (besides the Summer Exhibition still rumbling on in the main galleries) is a small display of drawings and engravings by Sir Henry Rushbury RA (1889–1968) in the Tennant Gallery (until 12 September). John Hoyland, who was a student at the Royal Academy Schools in the late 1950s when Rushbury was the Keeper, remembers him as a benign presence, who encouraged him to go to the south of France. Hoyland thinks this wouldn’t have happened at the Royal College or Slade — he would have been prevented from going. Instead, Rushbury who, in Hoyland’s words, ‘was like Mr Pickwick, bald at the front with long grey-white hair, watch chain and tummy’, said, ‘Go and paint sunshine, boy.’ And so Hoyland embarked upon a lifetime’s habit of exotic travel which has fed and enriched his work ever since.
Rushbury was an enormously successful painter-etcher in his lifetime, with an international reputation, but he is largely forgotten today. An official War Artist in both world wars, he was a star of the etching boom of the 1920s and was particularly adept at drypoint, a method of engraving directly on to copper plates with a steel or diamond point. He was a brilliant architectural draughtsman, able to evoke the atmospheric fall of light on stone through his contrast-rich etchings. He travelled widely, drawing and painting in watercolour the sights he encountered; back home, he worked meticulously to achieve the distinctively rich, velvety textures of his prints. Royal Academy Publications have produced a very handsome book to accompany the exhibition, entitled Henry Rushbury: Prints, A Catalogue Raisonné (£29.95), sponsored by Punter Southall Ltd, Actuaries and Consultants. Here is a beautiful and lasting souvenir of Rushbury’s work, and a serious assessment of his achievement. A pleasure to handle.
Be aware that the Tennant Gallery (on the same level as the bookshop towards the front of the building) is not open on a Monday. I tried to see the show again before writing about it, but was not allowed in, though why the RA employs a guard to keep people out of the room, when the very same doorkeeper could be in charge of letting them in, is a mystery known only to the panjandrums of Burlington House. If you should mistime your RA visit to a Monday, it is worth returning: Rushbury is very good, and a welcome touch of class after the let-down of the Sargent show.
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