when I was researching John Singer Sergeant for one of my YouTube videos I came across this
painting something about it held my gaze I found myself literally staring at it and each time I
did I felt like I was actually there looking at the scene it's very Loosely painted which
communicates energy or movement the colors are wonderful they're so fresh and brilliant
I don't know if it was winter spring or summer the mass of whites could communicate
snow or Frost or just a sense of reflective light whatever the case it doesn't matter
I don't need to know Sergeant was best known for his portrait paintings but eventually got burnt
out and started focusing more on landscapes and watercolor around the turn of the 20th century
during this time Sergeant went on many painting excursions often to the mountains of Northwestern
Italy the Italian Alps he traveled with friends and often one particular friend Ambrosio rafaeli
a fellow landscape and Portrait Painter now his style of painting was quite different from
Sergeants but the two men shared a love of the mountains and painting Plein Air
it was on one of these trips that he painted this study which he signed to his friend rafaeli
let's take a closer look at this piece this was painted using watercolor and gouache which is
an opaque form of watercolor and you can see the difference if you look here at this transparent
blue spot that is watercolor versus here this looks more cloudy or opaque that's gouache
the trees also look like they're watercolor see how transparent they are now you have a
horizon line right about here it's just off center and you have a broad foreground with
great perspective lines can you see those lines it looks like perhaps two branches of the water
the grouping of trees on either side provide asymmetrical balance
the trees on the left are more chromatic and have that single dark tree which to my eye
helps balance the large dark neutral Mass on the right now the mountains are implied
they're partially covered by cloud or fog and look at the confident brushwork look at that
in general this whole scene is fantastic you've got this confident splotch of opaque white gouache
adding to what could be seen as a scribbled looking sky but it works he also has little
dabs and dashes of chromatic color such as this beautiful turquoise color that he has in the water
it's enhanced by all these muted Violet tones some of these colors are familiar if you look at his
work often but the percentage and the placement of these colors in this piece is especially stunning
he also complements the blue and the turquoise with these blasts of orange well placed
some of them are feathered and you can see how fast his brush was moving
you also have a lot of neutral colors you can see here if everything was bold and colorful it
would be hard to look at this offers some color balance now where are his deepest values you have
some deep values down here in the blue but look at this it's almost pure black right along the
horizon line those are the darkest values you also have these darks which form the base of the trees
all of the white in the foreground here is balanced with the white in the sky
so this painting has a lot of balance and a great use of values
this has a bit of a triangular shape doesn't it which is always pleasing to the eye
this one as well overall what composition design do you think he used well in this case if we
follow the perspective lines they take us back to this strong value contrast to Black and White
it tells your eye where to go not to mention the attention this line draws
and the importance of this area of white
that sunlit part of the mountain is really important for communicating depth look how the
feeling changes if we remove it it's still a great painting but it loses depth and visual interest so
this whole area is commanding attention and would in my opinion be considered a large Center object
Sergeant's ability to capture and actually enhance
the colors of nature as well as his breathtaking brush work are
some of the reasons he and his artwork have become especially popular in recent times
whether painting highly realistic impressionistic or more loose and Abstract work Sergeant was one
of those artists who even a century later can lead the viewer to see what he sees
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