In the winter of 1879, a 23-year-old John Singer Sargent stood in the Prado, copying Las Meninas (below). The master’s canvas was nearly ten feet tall and had been hanging in that room for over two hundred years, dimmed by varnish and lampblack. Sargent struggled to understand how an artist who was deceased since 1660...
n the winter of 1879, a 23-year-old John Singer Sargent stood in the Prado, copying Las Meninas (below). The master’s canvas was nearly ten feet tall and had been hanging in that room for over two hundred years, dimmed by varnish and lampblack. Sargent struggled to understand how an artist who was deceased since 1660 could bring painted figures to life. […] His teacher Carolus-Duran had built an entire pedagogy around a single command: ”Velázquez, Velázquez, Velázquez, ceaselessly study Velázquez.” Duran drilled it into every student who walked through the atelier door. Forget about Raphael or Rubens. Instead put your eyes on Velázquez.
What Sargent learned from Velázquez? | James Gurney
Gurney mentions two of my favorite artists in the whole world: John Singer Sargent and Diego Velázquez.
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