Man Seated by a Stream 1912

John Singer Sargent painted this watercolour, Man Seated by a Stream, sometime in his career, and it just sings with a playful, light-filled touch. Look at the water – how it shimmers and flows with such breezy, fluid strokes! I can imagine him right there, squinting in the sun, dabbing the paper with watery blues and purples. It’s like he’s trying to capture not just what he sees, but how it feels to be there, next to that stream. Watercolour does that, doesn’t it? It's so immediate, so transparent; you can’t really fuss over it too much. I wonder if he felt that he was channeling something bigger, something that's always there, that dialogue painters have been having for centuries, trying to nail down light and movement, and the way that water just keeps on going.