>>5893043>>5893040>>5890912Something else that I love about Sargent is that he also modified his proportions to make the painting more appealing, it's just done so well you can't tell. So in fact, his work is more luminous than any traced or photorealistic painting, since he subtly uses idealised proportions to accentuate his subjects.
For example if you redlined this painting and another of some prominent woman I can't remember the name of, he obviously lengthens torsos and legs, especially the upper chests of women as here, as well as slimming the waist and tilting the waist back from the chest/ribcage unnaturally (but then hiding it in his flowy garments which he always makes more painterly to avoid hard-edged detail anyways). I wouldn't be surprised if the extended arm here is either out of proportion with the body or relative to the other arm's total length - but the organic diagonal on the right side and the way the folded arm disappears into her form aid the composition.
This is what a poor education does to wannabe artists. They assume that the master paintings that nearly glow or come out of the canvas only do so due to imperfect photorealism, and because of the painter's technical skill in depicting reality, they can't fathom the artist would skillfully distort it as well. Disappointing really...
