Philosophy

Philosophy sits alone. Sargent painted him as a young man wrapped in a pale cloak over blue, one knee drawn up, his chin resting on his hand and his eyes lowered, against a ground of muted gold. He holds no book and no scroll. The panel is about two metres tall, painted between 1922 and 1925 and put up in 1925 beside The Unveiling of Truth. For his murals in this museum Sargent had worked out a manner of his own, with firm outlines, soft colour and a flat surface left unvarnished, so that from a distance the canvases recall the fresco cycles of Italian churches. A small oil study for Philosophy, about 35 centimetres high, is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The pose is already settled there, down to the hand at the chin and the criss-cross pattern on the wall behind him.