Sargent's Murals

For the past nine months critics have been writing estimates of John Singer Sargent. All that can be said about a great man in the period immediately following his death has been said; but more eloquent than any encomium were the fantastic prices for his pictures at the recent London sale.

Last week the Boston Museum of Fine Arts unveiled certain murals on classic subjects which he had painted to embellish its walls; opened at the same time the most comprehensive exhibition of his work which has ever been shown in the U. S.

Sargent was a great draughtsman and well equipped to champion, in a leveling age, the traditions of an imperious past. The Boston murals all treat classic subjects: Chiron teaching a very delicate Achilles how to handle a bow; Atlas stooping among the golden girls of the Hesperides; Hercules, with a billet the size of a railroad tie in his fist, fencing with the Hydra's ducking heads.

Said a super-critic: "If critics who have so carefully laid their round formal wreaths upon Sargent's tomb should discover in these murals some reminiscence of the art calendar, let them not suggest that 'Philosophy' might have been intended as the decoration for a magazine poem; that 'Science Measuring the Heavens While a Young Woman Makes Record' looks like a satire upon the modern Babbitt's indispensable stenographer. Such things are matters of opinion, and the only opinion which has not yet been given upon John Singer Sargent is that of posterity."