Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts 1906

John Singer Sargent made this portrait of Frederick Sleigh Roberts, the 1st Earl Roberts, with oil paints, and you can tell Sargent was really thinking about how to build up form with color. Instead of harsh lines, he uses these subtle shifts in tone to give shape to Roberts’s face and figure. Look at the way Sargent handles the red of Roberts’s uniform, it’s like he's playing with the paint, letting it be itself. There’s a real materiality to it, a sense of the paint being thick in some areas, almost scrubbed into the canvas in others. It's easy to get lost in all those medals Roberts is wearing. But see how they kind of dissolve into these sparkly, blurry lights? It’s less about the details and more about the overall effect. Sargent was like a virtuoso performer, and you can see him flexing his skills here, echoing artists like Velázquez and Goya in his own way. Art’s a conversation, right?