Lord Ribblesdale, John Singer Sargent, National Gallery, London source
I went through the galleries looking for something that surprised me. I got to the ground floor. I found the impressive portrait of Lord Ribblesdale by John Singer Sargent. It is a painting that acts as a vortex in the room. It is impossible not to end up prostrate before him attracted by the disturbing gaze of the portrayed character and a subtle perspective that acts as a trompe l'oeil so that the pictorial space where the figure resides is a natural extension of the physical space of the viewer. Something that can also be experienced in the Las Meninas room, at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
The penetrating and incisive gaze recalls the severe characters from Charles Dickens in the same way that the commoner characters of Velázquez could well be siblings of Sancho Panza. A civilization shines in all its splendor when literature is consistent with painting. When that character who catches you in a book suddenly prostrates himself in front of your eyes in a painting from the same era. That penetrating gaze, the weight of the figure, the shadow play of the clothing, immediately brings you to another time. It is the sublimation of the aesthetic experience. Art manifests itself when it alters your immediate experience.
I was pensive in contemplating that work by Sargent when I finally decided to pay tribute to him. I opened my notebook and unsheathed my flexible rhodium-tipped Pilot Falcon pen, and began to interpret the colossal work of art in front of me. This was the result:
There is something incredibly relaxing about the hatching technique, much appreciated by the British, by the way. With a little patience and practice, and speaking of drawing, we are talking of a period of not less than 3 years, it is possible to capture the texture and light. If a pattern needs to be darkened, simply hatcht it in any other direction until the desired value is found. The underlying idea is that no hatching is "invasive" and always dissolves among the others. But I will talk about this later.
I was immersed and focused on executing my drawing in that room, when I heard the noise of some heels approaching. It was a woman in her 40s, thin, dressed in a black raincoat. She sat a few meters near me and opened her sketchbook, joining me in the contemplation of Sargent's painting.
At the end of our respective drawings we are drawn to each other attracted by the curiosity of our respective works. That is the power of drawing. Drawing creates a singularity in space-time, modifying the trajectories, creating a psychological attraction, summoning a fork in the destination. The conversation settled immediately as naturally as possible, both of us knowing that we were drinkers of the same hobby.
Some time later I understood something very characteristic of the spirit of London. It is a city that applauds what you do. If you manage to move your improbable spectators with your creation by creating an authentic feeling, Londonians do not hesitate for a second to share it with you and. During that process, the person opens up to you. I could say that the Londoner is sincere when he feels, quite the contrary, that, for example, the Parisian. I always draw wherever I go, my drawings can be bad, mediocre or sometimes successful, but the reactions they provoked in London had never been experienced. Where my Parisian viewer stops, short-circuited by the absence of common personal references that validate the exchange, the Londoner, however, invites you to his contact book. In short, he invites you to contribute to his personal story.
Her name was Louise, during the conversation she spoke to me about a painter that I had never heard of before: Euan Uglow.