The Forger's Masterclass - Ep.08 - John Singer Sargent

my name is John Myatt in my time I've been a teacher a painter and an art forger in 1999 I was jailed for forging over 200 paintings a crime but rocked the art world and I paid the price for it these days by painting the style of the great masters and sell them legally as honest fakes and I've started teaching the tricks of my trade to aspiring artists because all painters can learn by copying others today we'll be painting in the style of an American artist who was the most celebrated portrait painter of his time John Singer Sargent I'm not particular about it more excited I just hope I don't fiddle too much and wreck it hello and welcome to Middleton Hall here in Staffordshire well in recent times photographers such as Cecil Beaton David Bailey Mario Testino have been commissioned to capture the likeness of the world's wealthy and iconic people but back at the turn of the 20th century the great and the good the rich and the famous were flocking to the studio of John Singer Sargent such was his celebrity that people would actually cross the Atlantic just for a chance of a sitting in his studio born in Florence in 1856 two wealthy American parents Sargent created a sensation when he started painting in Paris with his amazing technical ability by putting together standard academic practice with reviewer paint skills he was able to put portrait painting right back on the map to paint a portrait in sergeants masterful style is a real challenge for even the most skilled artist I'm Sally Brooks am i living was to share and I'm an art teacher my name is Gordon Collett I live near Windsor I'm a muralist and I specialize architectural trompe l'oeil I'm Pat London I live near Solihull and I'm an artist and art teacher I guess it would be quite interesting to be the students because then I can sympathize with my pupils in the classroom when I'm showing them and demonstrating to them the techniques I want them to do I have no idea what's going to be in front and I'm really looking forward to seeing what I could do it's all good spin you and I've never had not lesson before would be the first time someone's taught me how to paint their subjects I'm not looking forward to if daddy's watch chosen probably is a portrait or a figure the challenge for anybody today trying to paint in the style of Singer Sargent is actually not to get bogged down with all the detail details he said we'll just take care of themselves well make of that what you will but there were newspaper cartoons at the time showing Sargent attacking a painting with a mop such was the Guster with which he worked well I just hope that today's students can take that plunge find that courage and work the same way that he did Pat Sally Gordon today your task is to complete a painting in the style of ah like John Singer Sargent gosh ah but what I think a most beautiful beautiful painting and a wonderful artist yes it's fantastic gosh very very clear on the immaterial you look look what you're doing I am yes a challenge because you were saying you hoped it wasn't Sargent didn't die getting in right we hoped it wasn't a portrait I hoped it wasn't a portrait oh well style if my work is more abstract but I shall have a game I like in a lot I looking forward time ago at that in a career spanning over 40 years sergeant painted more than 500 portraits like this one of Nancy Astor he painted numerous murals watercolors and landscapes but he is best known for these stunning records of early twentieth-century high society he always drew the attention to the face you can get away with murder here into in fact in terms of you know handling and brushwork you can actually afford to keep quite a lot of this very loose but this is the area where you have to have this is where the eye is drawn because she's looking at you you're looking at her and this is if there is any detail it's there so I leave that to towards the end of the painting I want you to use this color scheme definitely because I think it's a simple color scheme a mixture of black dark burnt umber and then ochre yellow ochre even over the flesh area really and then the soft kind of wool warm red umber glaze round here and ochres again down here just tightened quite quite actually quite abruptly heightened here with with whiter so it's a really restricted palette I think that's probably the only red moment on the painting that was lovely lips she's gone fantastic she's a real corker isn't she I loved this artist I appreciate his work tremendously whether I'll be able to emulate it of Nadia I've taught myself painting by copying other people's work and as I mean go along my work is getting looser and looser and just seeing the fabrics and the highlighting as I'm looking forward to seeing how much I actually know about that now war trades I haven't done for a long time life drawing I probably haven't touched for 13 odd years so yes it'll be a nice challenge for me so ladies and gentlemen here is our Edwardian socialite don't forget to tackle this job with flamboyance and gusto this after all is high society let's go these three may not be high society but they've certainly taken on a big challenge I really hope they can rise to the occasion right just before we start Pat Gordon Sally I'm going to leave Sargent painting here just so you can reference the proportions so we can see how much of the head occupies how much of the canvas just to give you some idea okay first thing is to remember that he used large dollops of paint large dollops he put vast quantities of paint not tiny little bits and we don't want a wishy-washy kind of thing we want a lot of paint going on as soon as possible keep the center of the work in in a no Kurush get an ochre ish kind of hue in the center dark towards yet he he covered the painting the whole painting surface very rapidly and you must do the same as I said if you ain't got it covered in 20 minutes time I'm going to do it for you and I'm not joking could you just for a moment darling could you just throw your head back that way so they can actually see see what the neck is doing here you'll strong line down here of this muscle so just hold it for a second you just look at the head please everybody because that is going to be the final position one of the hardest parts of portraiture is getting the proportions right it's glad to see a few if you're doing this that's well done Gordon this business here is quite simply too much to get the proportions once you've established the actual size of the head from chin to top of the head you then drop this down here like so and you can make a kind of mark so two heads equals that mark just there now keeping the same measurement there - there takes me to that mark they're quite a useful one and again down here to the wrists so I kind of measured you see measured using the head as the standard unit of measure Sargent would have worked the old-fashioned way he would have worked from dark to light so get the darkest tones in oh good start that good start you happy yes I think so - so am i happy there Gordon I'm not sure yet by just getting the stuff in the back of certainly there you go you make the bigger feel it after I got it around it no Sally that's looking really zits that's looking quite powerful already isn't it yes ah what a great start they're all making I'm John is the head too big just a little bit yeah it's quite flattering to have the head small on the body anyway but I think you've got the actual shape of the skull if you like right but you've just taken if we just lost that just put a bit of okay if we just lost that yeah just took that away yeah and then that actually established the shade the whole of the side of the head isn't shade anyway but I would just you're depending on the outlines at the present moment it'll be quite nice if you actually just locked in blocked this and then we can jiggle the tones up and down presently we're dependent on our clients yeah I'm while we're shoving outlines around we're only shooting with with one gun instead of you know half a dozen we need to get the tones and that's why we want those turns in quickly because if something is in the wrong place I can just move a tone to that side or that side and I can adjust all that in art there are many techniques that can help you with your painting one of the very oldest of all academic tricks and I'm sure you've all seen it is that you darken the background to the this side of the face because this side of the face is catching the light so you emphasize and in this side where the shade you lighten the background we've seen that you see it's so often in academic painting it's just an old trick and they always do it Sargent was gifted with amazing technical virtuosity from the very beginning but he applied an adventurous spontaneity to formal academic portraiture to create his own unique style and was rewarded with instant commercial success people flocked to his Paris studio to sit for dramatic flattering and sometimes provocative portraits the only time he ever really had any controversy as such was early days in France with the infamous portrait of Madame X in the strapless dress and this was considered just a bit too erotic for the time and led to a falling away of his customers in Paris so he crossed the English Channel and set up shop in London I've got a good feeling about today students I think they could really capture something of Sergeant Pat Gordon Sally the time has now come right this is the moment when we actually blitz the canvas and I don't mean the face I mean the dress I want you to load the brush with as much paint as you can a lighter version of that dress that Sarah is wearing and I want you to attack that canvas in one movement like that what confident and aggressive take a step back before you do let's do it the sergeant way take a step back and right we've got plenty of time to put mistakes right so let's just take a few risks because this actually is going very well is anybody taking a step back and lunging at the painting like a fencer haven't seen it yet take a step back and lunge come on now just that's the match their stuff ha ha take a step back Pat a lunge lunge and that's baton wish that's the one step back and lunge this is what excited halt his all his customers they loved it it was like working with a like the drama of your portrait was unfolding in front of you there was sergeant hoorah all that stuff it was a bravia or a show for them but it worked it did the job and of course he produced the paintings too they're all still looking a bit uncertain so maybe I'll have one of those here's one I made earlier moments might I just stop you right there and show you something that I did personally in this idiom to give you an idea right here's a portrait I did recently of a lady in Audion costume and i don't want you to concentrate on the face but what you can see is that the eye is drawn to the face because all the detail is there what I want you to look at is the dress and the hat look at that what job done that's what I'm asking you to do now did he use a knife or two suppository no you do not use knives we're not have this is not we're not using pallet knives you can use your fingers you can use your fingers of course you can use your fingers all sensible artists use their fingers pallet knives it's very easy to make it to make it look pathetic and you know kind of touristy marbella 19:56 type rubbish painting i wish i ranging looking back it's hard to believe i once almost gave up painting when I came out of prison actually I got no no intention at all to do any more painting whatsoever but um it was the it was the policeman who arrested me who called me up and said I'm you know what are you doing and why don't you do some more painting and I said oh for goodness sake you know it's nothing but trouble and he said no no go on lots of people would be interested in what you do so he commissioned a family portrait from me and that's how I started off and after that he here said well there's quite a few of these lawyers who were interested in you know in what you've done I would like a little memento of the case oh and before I knew where I was really I've got a I got a business in in painting um I'm painting fakes I suppose not forgeries but fakes which is legal and they were signed on the back as well John Myatt genuine fakes and good well here's the painting by a called mana that I did earlier as they say back in 2003 and what I've done here is microchip the back of it I have a friend who lives locally who puts these a VI D chips on the back plus a little leaflet which actually identifies that chip to these numbers if you want to remove that chip what you've got to do is cut a hole in the canvas because it wouldn't come off otherwise and that is one way of I've establishing the identity as well as course signing it here John Myatt genuine fakes 2003 so I go to quite a bit of trouble now to to make sure that they they stay legit now I've gone straight I really enjoy passing on my knowledge of painting to others I think it's probably I'm just getting here to assume but what eventually when Gordon has applied this mid-tone in this vigorous way bit more different that's the stuff when you've applied that mid-tone in that vigorous way then almost pure white I think don't you just a few places just the highlights I cover the canvas with the dark brown and the Achra of the oak leaf to start with and left the figure sort of light immediately it felt more dramatic so then when you've got the dark brown menu background then you can blocking the sort of more satiny for you now these lovely dress essentially for me the first thing was to get the figure to fit in the canvas as per sergeant's example and so I guess I just went straight for paint brush drafted out quite loosely and I've sort of blocked it in using the block painting technique as John mentioned and now I'm fiddling and I just hope I don't fiddle too much and wreck it after moving to England sergeant continued in Israel as a prolific society painter painting approximately 15 to 25 Commission's each year and charging 2,000 guineas each time that's over 150,000 pounds each portrait in today's money in fact you were nobody unless Sargent had taken your likeness poets presidents industrialists all came to sergeants studio he was offered a knighthood by King Edward the seventh but he turned it down because it would have meant giving up his American citizenship turning down this honor did nothing to undermine sergeants popularity in Britain Society beauties like Nancy Astor still sought out the flattery of his brush and if we examine the painting carefully we can see why can I draw your attention all of you now to the edges every transition here as we go up is a transition between really quite not a very adventurous transition the tones are quite similar here here the outline is almost broken here dark against not quite so dark and then we get a whole shadow area coming into the brown of the brown bleeding back in until we come up to the shoulder and that's where that the whole drama of the outline changes we've got light against dark look what happens when we get to the face then look what he's done here he softened that edge right out right out it's it's actually quite quite dramatically turned isn't it that's what makes this a professional piece of work find the edge of your of your work now and if you can particularly when we get up here just soften soften slightly by with your fingers by just rubbing in episode slightly just softening the edge and then at another point harden it up well she started well enough but I think Pat needs a bit of guidance now don't dab too much just put it on once and leave it okay and then this quite a strong cheekbone particularly this movement over here just a lovely strong highlight just there just okay leave that now well Pat Gordon and Sally I think it's just about time that we started looking at the models face and working the detail into into that face sergeant was once asked how did he manage to get such a good likeness now what he said doesn't make too much sense to me but for what it's worth I'll tell you what he said he said if you get the shape of the skull if you get the shape of the head don't worry about the eyes the nose and the mouth if you get the shape look for the shape of the skull look for the unique shape of Sarah skulls cheekbones here she's got quite defined cheekbones if you take this distance between here and here the pupils will be roughly halfway between those two and then the root of the nose here will be roughly halfway between the pupils on the chin and the line of the lips and the mouth halfway again between the root of the nose and the tip of the chin set all the action takes place really here the likeness is defined here not here although this constitutes half of the whole face so what he's saying is look for the skull find the skull the shape of the skull and then everything else will just drop into place now I've tried it and it doesn't work for me but I pass it on to you because it might work for you it's difficult to get the flesh tones right that lovely face color that she's got which is sort of turned but not too turned and at the moment it looks a bit muddy so I gotta breathe a bit of life into what I normally do is much much bigger I don't do little paintings at all so this is a fiddly that's it sali good idea lovely it just turns it away from you it's the face is too bright to the moment it is slightly isn't it yeah what you've got Sally is a is a dark moment here as their as they I kind of some knows plunges in here then you've got their kind of the sphere of the eye and right the way down the side of the nose here you've got dark moments all the way down don't ever make the mistake of making the whites of the eyes white they're just not by far the the lightest moment on this face I think is this is this highlight and if we have to have a highlight it's here on those pearls here I think maybe here this the the light hear the tone value here is lighter than the whites of her eyes that actually in black and white is a lighter moment here over the top of the eye that lovely sort of shape there was that the skull kind of curves under for the for the socket that is lighter than those there's a tiny spot a tiny highlight in the in the white of the eye but that's it but not get my back despite his fame Sargent was an intensely private person he never married he travelled the world in the company of his valet and at other times with his two sisters and their families in tow there were rumors of homosexuality but since all his private papers were destroyed in 1925 after his death we will never know and frankly it doesn't matter one way or the other because it doesn't affect the legacy that he left behind he was the Edwardian society portrait painter I'd be thrilled if any of today's students could come even close to a 21st century sergeant but some of us have still got a way to go the trouble here Pat is that these you see all the skin tones are actually you've got them lighter than the lightest point on the dress now vice come with me and squint at er right let's just do a squid the lightest part the very very lightest thing I can see the lightest thing like he is here from where you are this is light okay there's nowhere on this face which is brighter than that look at the skin colors you wear you're giving me tones which is explosive and that is that kind of puts a hint of amateurish listen we've got to get your tone values right I hope I'm not being too hard on her but tone values is what it's all about today has been a real challenge for my three students to emulate in just one day one of the greatest portrait artists of all time when it's quite a challenge isn't it let's see if any of them have managed to capture the sergeant magic on canvas right thank you very much everybody you've all done extremely well brushes down if you will please and let's have a look at what we've got I'm really hopeful that they've all done the master proud right here we go Gordon your painting in a lovely frame you're ready what do you think what do I think well it's a nice frame it sits in there nicely color match and and I wasn't it too bad I try to do it you said I wasn't trying to a picture like a Normandy I was trying to do it in the Sargent esque manner so like in the head I did literally paint the skull I think this would pass for a studio sketch if I was sergeant or if you were a portrait painter what I do is I'd sit the model down I think okay we'll just play with this for a for a few hours and this is the kind of work that you come up with and then okay he'll take those further two weeks to do to come the completed job but no this wonderful attempt very good I would like to felt like Sargent fainting is easel but it's just a little bit too small to get the old you know fancy strokes on Pat's your painting in a gilt frame here we go what do you think I'm not displeased with it I I don't think it's a slightest bit like Singer Sargent you made a very good start I mean in this desert yes brushing away would show that that's what laughs and then subsequently I realized that I probably was going away from what you actually were suggesting this could do with glazing down the tones are not you know this rather peculiar beetroot color we should we should we you know we should lose as soon as we could look at these edges here this edge is a is a is a single journey all the way line if this was a sergeant it wouldn't be things like that on what distinguish the amateur from the professional it's just what you do with your edges and by by professional I mean early 20th century professional academic painting what you went to school to learn in an Academy was how to handle your edges when I've got at home in working on something else I shall be able to rethink today what what you've said and I shall use it thank you to him thank you pass I said of overwork teaching that I went over the pics at mating bits that were there in the first place and probably made it to her a bit too fiddly so sorry like the other two students you've worked very hard today let's see you're painting in a gold frame what do you think I'm quite pleased with my end result where would you say the success of this work is really possibly working at speed surprisingly I didn't think I was going to get it done but I felt I work pretty quickly and captured the dress and I guess the proportion I love the way you've got this white highlight here that's just lovely you have played with the edges as we go down the edge we can we can at least have some kind of enjoyment of something soft happening here down here and suddenly dark meets light and we've got a bit of drama going down here and again up here will be where we've got a hard edge turning into a soft one that is what I was hoping to see and that is classic technique if you like what you do with the edge well done anyway congratulations and thank you very much all of you I felt sort of quite refreshed trying out some sergeants brush marks and that I wouldn't say my lenses were particularly successful it's been quite a day Gordon's had an amazing success for a self-taught artist Pat got off to a great start but for me of the three Sally has got the closest to realizing a sergeant as to which is the best painting well that's for you to decide I am so proud of my three students today they have taken on someone with all the natural ability of a Mozart an Einstein or a Picasso and they've managed to capture some of that poise and elegance of the Grand Master of Edwardian portraiture himself John Singer Sargent

Channel: TheArtyBartfast

Views: 593,678

Keywords: art, forger, forgery, forgers, master, class, artist, john, myatt, sargent, painting, paint

Id: oPcQRa41hEo

Length: 28min 33sec (1713 seconds)

Published: Thu May 31 2012