The Sketchers 1913

Here is a painting by John Singer Sargent, of two sketchers in the landscape. The painting has come into being through loose brushstrokes and what I’d call an impressionistic mode, which is a way of attending to the shifting qualities of light and air. You get a sense of the artist being right there, *en plein air*, trying to capture the moment before it vanishes. I sympathize with the artist, trying to work in all that brightness. The white umbrella is casting such strong light around it. I imagine the painter thinking about how to handle this, maybe grappling with the challenge of representing the very act of representing. It’s like a hall of mirrors where the painting is reflecting on itself as a process. That blue smock worn by the sketcher standing on the left is a key gesture, pulling the eye up and across the painting, which gives a nice rhythmic flow. Painting is an ongoing conversation across time and space, and this painting has had something to say to generations of artists.