White Ships 1908

John Singer Sargent made ‘White Ships’ at an unknown date with watercolor. The brushstrokes here are so immediate, loose, like he’s trying to catch something that’s about to disappear. You can feel his hand moving quickly, darting across the paper. I love how the watery paint kind of mimics the scene itself, the boats bobbing in the harbor, the reflections shimmering on the surface. It’s almost like he’s not just painting the ships, but the whole atmosphere, the feeling of being there, and you can really feel the texture, the physicality of the thing. Look at the mast on the right, and how it almost bleeds into the water - it’s like he’s dissolving the boundary between the solid and the liquid. Sargent reminds me a little of Manet, especially in the way they both captured light and movement. It’s this kind of ongoing conversation that makes art so endlessly fascinating, don’t you think?