Sargent's edges

A woman complained on facebook that there were no women in the photo of the pirate gang. Here is my remedy.

Sargent image from artrenewal.org

Sargent was a master at handling edges. One of the advantages to his working alla prima was that since whole passages were wet up at a time, he could blend edges easily. Blending a wet edge when both sides of that edge are wet is very effective blending a wet edge into a dry passage is never as good. Let me walk you through some of the hard and soft edges in this little girls head.

1. There is a hard edge where the zygomatic arch meets the ear. Below this the edge go soft as the cheek is softer than the bone there.
2. The turn of the jaw is represented with a hard edge.
3. The line of the jaw goes from hard, to soft, to imperceptible at point 3
4. The cast shadow of her hair is razor sharp, as cast shadows often are. This is a bony area too, so the edge helps communicate that.
5. This edge at the top of the nose is very soft, showing the delicacy of her skin, but also giving contrast to the hard edge at 4 nearby.
6. Another hard edge as the bony cage of the eye meets the upper lid.
7. The lower lid and the white of the eye are treated as one shape. The edge is almost imperceptible here.
8. The bottom of the earlobe here is hard as it sits in space away from the head.
9. At 9 the line of the ear is softened again where the outside of the ear and the hair are fused together.

The edges I have described were based on observation, but Sargent thoughtfully designed them to better express the forms he wished to describe. The rhythmic coming and going between the hard and soft edges gives the painting vitality and visual excitement. Sargent's handling of edges had a profound influence on the painters of that generation and the next. The Boston School painters imitated this quality endlessly. Great painters have always had hard and soft edges, but Sargent seemed to make more of an art out of it than most the painters just before his time. His edges give his paintings and elegant grace and add immensely to his depiction of form.