Clearly it's paint, thick streaks of paint loosely applied at various angles, unblended.

很明顯，那是顏料，厚厚的顏料條紋從不同角度鬆散地塗抹著，沒有調和。

You can almost see the paintbrush making the strokes across the canvas.

你幾乎可以看到畫筆在畫布上劃過的痕跡。

Nothing recognizable seems to be depicted here.

這裡似乎沒有描繪任何可識別的東西。

At this distance, the image looks messy and abstract.

從這個距離看，畫面顯得凌亂而抽象。

But let's back up.

但讓我們倒回去。

At this distance, those loose brush strokes perfectly resolve into a yellow shawl wrapped around a young woman in a billowy mint green dress who's laying back on a couch in an elegant room, an image of sweet afternoon repose, which is the name of this canvas from my favorite painter, John Singer Sargent.

在這個距離上，那些鬆散的筆觸完美地勾勒出一條黃色披肩，披肩上裹著一位身著薄荷綠長裙的年輕女子，她正躺在一個優雅房間的沙發上，這是一幅甜蜜的午後休憩圖，也是我最喜歡的畫家約翰-辛格-薩金特這幅畫的名字。

This difference between the close-up and the view of the whole canvas is the key to understanding Sargent's genius.

這種特寫與整幅畫之間的差異是理解薩金特天才的關鍵。

Everywhere you look in this painting, you see his supremely confident looseness, a kind of painting you maybe wouldn't think to associate with a realistic representation of the world.

在這幅畫中，你隨處都能看到他極度自信的鬆弛，這種畫風也許不會讓你聯想到對世界的真實再現。

And yet that's exactly the final effect, a realism that is somehow more true than finely detailed painting.

然而，這正是最終的效果，一種比精細繪畫更真實的現實主義。

Where did Sargent's confidence in this technique come from?

薩金特對這一技術的信心從何而來？

Well, to understand that, you have to understand Sargent's teacher, Carolus Duran, a 19th century French painter who bucked the academic emphasis on outline drawing, in which you would essentially paint inside the lines, building up and detailing your canvas section by section until the whole thing came together.

要理解這一點，就必須先了解薩金特的老師卡羅勒斯-杜蘭，他是一位 19 世紀的法國畫家，反對學院派強調的勾線畫法，這種畫法基本上是在線條內作畫，在畫布上逐段堆積和細化，直到整幅畫渾然一體。

Duran taught his students to abandon outlines and focus on capturing the colors and tonal values of what they saw.

杜蘭教他的學生們放棄輪廓，專注於捕捉他們所看到的色彩和色調值。

In painting, tonal value refers to how light or dark something is, with black being the darkest and white the lightest.

在繪畫中，色調值是指事物的明暗程度，黑色最暗，白色最亮。

Everything you see exists along that spectrum, and Duran believed that if you captured all the tonal relationships in your canvas accurately, if you got the ratios right, you'd present the reality we see more honestly.

杜蘭相信，如果你能準確捕捉畫布上的所有色調關係，如果你能把握好比例，你就能更真實地呈現我們所看到的現實。

In essence, his students had to learn to look at the world differently, flattening their sight to let objects melt into their values and colors, and the two-dimensional shapes they make.

從本質上講，他的學生必須學會用不同的眼光看待世界，將視線放平，讓物體融化在它們的價值、顏色以及它們構成的二維形狀中。

Then they had to get these shapes onto the canvas in paint, never working on one section for too long so as not to throw those value ratios off, because the painting is always a unity, a delicate series of relationships.

然後，他們必須用顏料把這些形狀畫到畫布上，絕不能在一個部分上畫太久，以免破壞價值比率，因為繪畫始終是一個整體，是一系列微妙的關係。

Duran's students learned to see beyond objects, to the light and color effects that describe them, and what they discovered is that this two-dimensional way of seeing produced paintings that were more three-dimensional in effect than anything that began with an outline.

杜蘭的學生們學會了超越物體，看到描述物體的光線和色彩效果，他們發現，這種二維的觀察方式所產生的繪畫效果，比任何從輪廓開始的繪畫都更具立體感。

It's a method Duran learned in part from Diego Velazquez, a Spanish painter who lived 200 years prior and was in many ways 200 years ahead of his time.

這是杜蘭從西班牙畫家迭戈-委拉斯開茲（Diego Velazquez）那裡學到的方法，委拉斯開茲生活在 200 年前，在很多方面都領先於他的時代 200 年。

If you look at Velazquez's career, you see him transition from the decorative conventions of his time to an earnest revolutionary attempt to capture his impression of reality.

縱觀委拉斯開茲的職業生涯，你會發現他從那個時代的裝飾性傳統過渡到了認真的革命性嘗試，以捕捉他對現實的印象。

Impression is, of course, the key word.

印象當然是關鍵詞。

Sargent came of age as the Impressionist movement, led by Claude Monet, flowered.

薩金特出生時，正值克勞德-莫奈上司的印象派運動蓬勃發展。

He was friends with Monet, staying with, learning from, and even painting him on occasion.

他是莫奈的朋友，和莫奈住在一起，向莫奈學習，甚至偶爾為莫奈作畫。

But Sargent was not usually counted among Impressionists with a capital I.

但薩金特通常並不屬於大寫字母為 "I "的印象派畫家。

He was part of a broader group, Impressionists with a lowercase i, in the way Velazquez was, in the way Duran was, in the sense that the impressions of light and color were his subjects.

他是一個更廣泛的群體的一部分，是小寫 i 的印象派畫家，就像委拉斯開茲和杜蘭一樣，光和色彩的印象是他的主題。

Sargent rapidly absorbed Duran's teaching and then exceeded him, a moment symbolized in his extraordinary portrait of Duran, which was honored by the Paris Salon of 1879 when Sargent was just 23.

薩金特迅速吸收了杜蘭的教導，然後超越了他，這在他為杜蘭創作的非凡肖像畫中得到了體現，這幅肖像畫在 1879 年的巴黎沙龍展出時，薩金特年僅 23 歲。

I mean, look at this face, the highlights on the forehead, nose, and lips, the upturned mustache, and the hair, fully realized without a touch of fine detail.

我的意思是，看看這張臉，額頭、鼻子和嘴脣上的亮點，上翹的鬍子和頭髮，完全實現了無微不至的細節處理。

Look at how he conjures a ring with a drop of yellow paint.

看看他是如何用一滴黃色顏料變出一枚戒指的。

As the novelist Henry James wrote, the young Sargent presents the uncanny spectacle of a talent which, on the very threshold of its career, has nothing more to learn.

正如小說家亨利-詹姆斯（Henry James）所寫的那樣，年輕的薩金特展現出了一種不可思議的景象：在其職業生涯的起點上，他已經沒有什麼可學的了。

This wasn't true, of course, but it spoke to Sargent's exceptional gift.

當然，這不是真的，但這也說明了薩金特的非凡天賦。

The Duran painting was a calling card for Sargent's portrait business, and high society came knocking en masse.

杜蘭的畫作是薩金特肖像畫業務的一張名片，上流社會紛紛慕名而來。

Given how many he did, Sargent is known chiefly as a portrait painter, and he is, simply put, the greatest portraitist who ever lived, capturing all the glamour of the late Victorian and Edwardian ages.

簡單地說，他是有史以來最偉大的肖像畫家，捕捉了維多利亞時代晚期和愛德華時代的所有魅力。

But a portraitist is not all he was.

但肖像畫家並不是他的全部。

After this stunning painting of a wealthy socialite caused a scandal in Paris for being too racy, Sargent moved to England and soon embarked on what I think is his greatest work, Carnation Lily, Lily Rose.

在這幅描繪富有社交名媛的畫作因過於豔俗而在巴黎引起醜聞之後，薩金特移居英國，並很快開始創作我認為是他最偉大的作品《康乃馨百合，百合玫瑰》。

Sailing along the Thames one summer evening, he saw Chinese lanterns hanging amid the foliage and was instantly moved to capture that interplay of light.

一個夏日的傍晚，他沿著泰晤士河航行，看到樹葉間懸掛著中國燈籠，他立刻動了拍攝這種光影交錯的景象的念頭。

The only problem is that this magical light, as we all know, only emerges for a few fleeting minutes every evening, and only in the summers.

唯一的問題是，我們都知道，這種神奇的光芒只能在每天傍晚出現幾分鐘，而且只能在夏天出現。

Sargent worked for two years on the painting, patiently waiting each day for the special moment to arrive, at which point he would have his friend's daughters pose in white dresses and work feverishly while the light lasted.

薩金特為這幅畫工作了兩年，每天都在耐心等待特殊時刻的到來，這時他就會讓朋友的女兒們穿著白色連衣裙襬好姿勢，趁著光線充足的時候熱火朝天地工作。

After painting and repainting again and again, he finally captured it.

經過一次又一次的繪畫和重繪，他終於捕捉到了它。

And here you can see the real merit of dialing in those values and colours, because what Sargent gets here, by the accumulation of little effects, is an atmosphere, a mauvish colouring that seems like it's in the air itself, which is what it really feels like to be outside on a summer evening.

在這裡，你可以看到調節這些數值和色彩的真正好處，因為薩金特在這裡通過小效果的積累，得到的是一種氛圍，一種彷彿存在於空氣中的朦朧色彩，這正是夏日傍晚室外的真實感受。

Sargent fused the lessons of Duran, Velazquez, the Impressionists, the Realists, with his own singular talent to forge a style in which mere suggestions laid down with a practiced looseness resolve at the right distance into the world.

薩金特將杜蘭、委拉斯開茲、印象派、現實派的教誨與自己的獨特天賦融為一體，創造出一種風格，在這種風格中，以一種練習有素的鬆散方式提出的建議與世界保持著適當的距離。

Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching.

大家好，非常感謝你們的收看。

This episode was brought to you by Squarespace.

本期節目由 Squarespace 為您帶來。

If you don't know, you can use Squarespace to make websites for anything you might need.

如果您不知道，您可以使用 Squarespace 製作任何您可能需要的網站。

Want to make a site for your video content?

想要為您的視頻內容創建一個網站？

Well, you can upload your video library directly to Squarespace and even sell access to that use the Squarespace Video Studio app to make pro-level videos within Squarespace and post your content on beautiful pages designed with their easy-to-use blogging tools.

您可以將視頻庫直接上傳到Squarespace，甚至還可以出售使用Squarespace Video Studio應用程序的權限，在Squarespace中製作專業級視頻，並將內容發佈到使用其簡單易用的博客工具設計的精美頁面上。

Basically, a Squarespace site is going to make whatever you're sharing or selling look professional, and that's going to help you get the word out, whatever that word actually is.

基本上，Squarespace 網站會讓你分享或銷售的東西看起來更專業，這將幫助你把話說出去，不管這個話到底是什麼。

Head over to squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch that site, go to squarespace.com slash nerdwriter for 10% off your first purchase.

前往 squarespace.com 免費試用，當你準備好啟動網站時，前往 squarespace.com slash nerdwriter 首次購買可享受九折優惠。

Thanks guys, I'll see you next time.

謝謝你們，我們下次再見。