John Singer Sargent's REAL Plein Air Painting Technique - Simplon Pass Breakdown

Correction: yes Sargent isn’t technically an “Old Master”, although he’s a master and by now his art is pretty old 🤷‍♂️

Sargent had alot of patience. Not many have this confidence to wait until the end of the painting to work out the important stuff. Even experienced painters tend to do it too early. Imagine, you work maybe days just doing the basics, you literally cant see the outcome at the end, just a bunch of paint clutted together, but you are confident to get it perfectly right at the end. Its the mind game he was the best in.

Even compared to the most familiar Impressionists who immediately preceded him, Sargent's colors often 'pop' so vividly, as to seem like Kodachrome slides, in a time when no color photography existed. One thing about this painting, and many of his watercolors, is how overall bright the key is - nary a bit of "black" anywhere, the darkest areas in shadow built from darker brown, blue, or green, with the later overpainting mostly accented lights. No outlining, just adjacent darks left to hint at edges. This is consistent with painting from life, as our eyes adjust and we see into shadows where cameras only read as "black." Modern landscape painters use often wide contrast range, especially in foregrounds, but that darkens the overall image and makes the accented light areas feel exaggerated, and more akin to Classical landscapes painted in the studio. Sargent masterfully used cool and warm midtones to imply contrast and shadow without having to push the actual contrast range, leaving the overall painting feeling brighter and more vibrant, where the darkest areas are one to two values lighter than other painters would have used.

Such an incredible painting. I’ve never seen it in such high resolution. Nice analysis!

Nice analysis. I would have never been able to leave that green blob so pure.

This was a great breakdown! Your videos are so high quality and informative!! Subscribed <3

Very good to introduce his technique in such details, Thank you !

Thanks so much. I loooove Sargent. Your analysis is superb.

Thank you for your excellent analysis.

Extremely helpful and in-depth analysis, Patrick! Keep going!

This was phenomenal. Thank you!

Thank you for your astute analysis and appreciation of Singer's work. This is a beautiful painting.

Hey Pat just wanted to say thanks for making this video; I would've never found that image of Simplon Pass without you sharing it. As a painter myself I love to get really close to artworks to see the techniques up close, so this ultra high res image is perfect.

Very instructive and insightful. Thanks!

Fantastic analysis Patrick. Thank you for sharing. It was incredibly interesting.

Thanks Patrick! This is a very valuable and insightful break down into your thoughts and I got a lot of out it! Thanks for making this video!

Such an insightful and interesting presentation. Thank you 👏

Wow, bravo, such a brillant video. Thank you !

Fantastic explanation and detail. Thank you!

Bravo. So well done. Thanks!