Here I think he is respected. I certainly infinitely prefer him to the simpering of Bougereau :>)

I love the painterliness, the loose marks and yet the keen observation underlying them. His compositions are superb as well and imaginative.

Certainly better now than not at all. I’ve added an addendum to the post and put it on the list of links. A surprising number of people come on these posts after they’ve been published via search engines, so it will still be very useful (and I’ll certainly make use of it!).

I love JSS – he’s a virtuso with a brush and I absolutely agree with you that essentially he’s a landscape painter – for me what he enjoys is painting light and colour. I’ve always taken the view that he did the portraits to pay the bills and what he really loved doing can be seen in all the watercolour sketches and landscapes.

I think one of the points that is maybe underplayed in the commentary and comments is that Sargent is brilliant at composition and the arrangement of value shapes.

I did a study of him in 2007 and that and all the references I found at the time plus links to various books about him can be found in the site I created to archive all the links – John Singer Sargent – Resources for Artists

I don’t know why I respond so strongly to beautifully executed visible brush strokes, but the appeal is undeniable.

If I recall, it went something like, from top to bottom: historical painting, genre painting (scenes of daily life), portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. So portraits were literally of only middling importance, and I think these attitudes still pertained at the time Sargent was painting, and well into the 20th century. So in addition to taking hits for his “facility” he was working in a genre that was not respected. In a word, too commercial.

Still he knocks me out! The sign of a great painter is not hiding your brush strokes, but making the viewer believe that your brush strokes are actually the object! Looks easy, but hard to pull off.

That, and the nonchalant liveliness of his subjects brought about by his brush strokes, are what make him a great painter.