John Singer Sargent The Rialto painting

John Singer Sargent The Rialto paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Chess Game painting
clandestinely (don't ask me why) to confer with his protégés, and then disappeared for good. The tale was like so many others one has heard, I could almost have predicted certain features -- such as that these same protégés had subsequently dedicated their lives to spreading their Mentor's word and institutionalizing his method as they understood it; that they too were roughly used as they transferred from college to but won proselytes by their zeal wherever they went. Neither was it surprising to learn that this Professor Giles, this "Grand Tutor" as his son called him, never committed his wisdom to the press: what academic department has not its Grand Old Man who packs the lecture-halls term after term but never publishes a word in his field? In fact, the one unusual particular of the whole story as I heard it this first time was the not-very-creditable one that the man had got a child, by a lady married to someone else; otherwise it was the standard painful history of reformers and innovators.
The problem for my visitor, then -- the fruit of this illicit planting -- was the common one faced by second-generation followers of any pioneer: to formulate the Master's