Sargent, though raised above his time, scarcely reveals in his portraits elevation of mind; he has the clear eye of the philosopher without his depth and breadth of vision; he has possessed himself of his age, and the age has taken possession of him. He swims on its sea with strokes of magnificent assurance, but with a vision bounded by the little surface waves around him; he has not sat above upon the cliffs, quietly pondering its wider and grander movements. So the intimacy revealed in the great majority of Sargent’s portraits is of that degree and quality which passes for intimacy in the polite society of to-day--a conformability to certain types of manner and feeling, with interesting little accents of individuality, that shall distinguish without too keenly differentiating; traits of style rather than of personality. Sometimes there is even less than this. The subject would seem to have got upon the artist’s nerves, interfering with the usual poise of his study, so that he seems to have allowed himself to be sidetracked on to some loopline of the temperament. Occasionally he touches a deeper level of intimacy, as in the portraits of Henschel, Mr. Penrose, and Mr. Marquand, and oftentimes in children’s portraits, notably in that of Homer St. Gaudens. But for the most part, I believe, it is not the personality of the sitter that attracts us so much as that of the artist, which he has seized upon the occasion to present to us; a personality of inexhaustible facets and of a variety of expression that, for the time being at least, creates an illusion of being all-sufficient. What a contrast he presents to Whistler, with whom he shares the honour of being among the very few distinctly notable painters of the present day! Sargent with his grip upon the actual, Whistler in his search for the supersensitive significance, are the direct antipodes in motive. Each started with a justifiable consciousness of superiority to the average taste of his times; but while Whistler, on one side of his character a man of the world, has in his art withdrawn himself into a secluded region of poetry, Sargent, almost a recluse, has delighted his imagination with the seemings and shows of things and with their material significance.