Sargent Reflection

▲ Image grid

Last Friday, our class went to a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Sargent exhibition. Personally, I was surprised. Including the big amount of portraits he painted, I could see that he deeply observed people and portrayed the unique characteristics of each them. For example, A Japanese Dancing Girl shows all the details not only of the movement and the background (which creates the atmosphere), but also the facial expression even though he wasn’t familiar with the Japanese culture and saw this girl for the first time. Also, George Henschel, which is another painting by Sargent, demonstrates how Sargent tried to express the emotions through the face. This indicates how Sargent took time and became friends with numerous people and kept well the relationship in his life. (because normally if we paint a portrait of someone else, we do it because we are willing to do so, but not forced).

I added both the pictures of the face and the movement of the body in the portraits. The faces are zoomed in for a better view of the expressions and because I believe that the eyes are the true ones to express the feelings. However, I tried to focus on the bodies because I think that people can hide facial expressions easily but not the body posture. People can be identified by the gestures they make and is remarkable for others to catch it and understand them. Here are some of the image selections: