Least of all is there any trickery about it. The painting is just plain painting with ordinary canvases, brushes, and pigments squeezed out of lead tubes. It is the simplest and most direct kind of brushing. Sargent has never been led astray by any of the technical phases or crazes. His method of handling is perhaps Parisian though it harks back to Hals, Velasquez, Goya, Tiepolo, without exactly resembling any one of them. In its fluid quality perhaps it has more affinity with the work of Rubens, though again there is no positive resemblance. It is Sargent’s own way of expressing himself. That there are defects attending this quality of expressiveness will not be denied, but they are comparatively unimportant. In the simple spreading of wet liquid paint certain results of depth or hue or texture are likely to be sacrificed. Often a profound shadow depth is produced by repeated glazings; thumbing and kneading of pigments on the canvas frequently result in a quality of color that cannot be directly spread with a brush; and, again, there are peculiar effects produced by underbasing that are not obtainable by surface manipulation. Kenyon Cox thinks that Sargent perhaps loses somewhat in textures by his direct method and cites as illustration his flesh painting. “The sweeps of opaque color laid on with a full brush are apt to give a texture as of drapery, no matter how accurate the particular tints may be; and if we are to have the pleasure of instantaneous execution, we must generally accept it with some diminution of the pleasure derivable from beautiful flesh painting.... Indeed, it may be said that the highest beauty of coloring is always more or less incompatible with too great frankness of procedure and demands a certain reticence and mystery.”[18] [18] _Ibid._ There may be, probably is, considerable truth in that statement though I cannot for the moment get away from Rubens--one of the most direct painters in all art and yet a great colorist and a splendid painter of textures, especially the texture of flesh. Sargent is no such colorist as Rubens, but the lack is perhaps inherent in the man rather than in the method. At the same time Mr. Cox is right in degree. Perhaps the most engaging quality of flesh coloring, to return to the illustration, can be obtained only by additions and overlayings of paint which give the feeling of the coloring coming up from below to the surface. The direct method will not answer save in the hands of a Rubens.