Simplon Pass

Sargent painted this stretch of the Simplon Pass, the old mountain road linking Switzerland to Italy, during a series of summers he spent in the Alps around 1909 to 1911. By then he had famously sworn off portrait commissions, the work that had made him rich and famous, grumbling that he was done painting "paughtraits." What he wanted instead was exactly this: rocks, water, and weather, painted outdoors with a box of oils and no client looking over his shoulder. The result has the feel of something done fast and with pleasure, the white water of the stream laid on in thick ribbons of paint while the boulders in the foreground are barely more than a few confident swipes of brown and violet.

The composition is oddly casual for such a grand setting. Rather than centering the peak, Sargent lets the hillside slide diagonally across the canvas, so the eye tumbles down the slope with the water. The mountain behind is flattened into blue-brown shadow, almost a backdrop, while the real attention goes to sunlight hitting wet stone. Little details reward a second glance: the sprigs of yellow wildflowers near the bottom edge, the young evergreens scattered on the right, and the spots where thin paint lets the canvas show through. Sargent made hundreds of these alpine studies, and while not every one is a masterpiece, they show a famous painter enjoying his summer holiday and working purely for himself.