Here's Sargent doing the Duchess X
In pink velours and pea-green checks.
"It helps," says he, "to lift your Grace
A bit above the commonplace."
--Oliver Herford, from Confessions of a Caricaturist
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Download Herford's book of caricatures at Project Gutenberg, link.
Feature on Oliver Herford on 100 Years of Illustration, link.
2 comments:
I love this kind of sideways, less adulatory view of famous people...
We're so used to reading about the famous (in this case: art heroes) in the past tense, with the benefit of hindsight, that we can barely see them as real people.
A wry comment like this is a breath of fresh air.
Sargent musing: "Just how shall I do justice to that little piggy nose? Perhaps this hogsbristle will meet the challenge".
We are probably just as well off not knowing what some of the famous personages in portraits really looked like.
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