STUDYING ENERGETIC COLOR – Sargent's masterly manipulation of working wet-into-wet is obvious in the shadow passages of Reading. In my study here (below), note the effervescent color changes as cool viridian mixes with orange, blue and purple-gray. To contrast these soft and playful effects, Sargent treated the sun-splashed edges of the forms with sharp, crisp decisiveness. Without his accurate yet animated preliminary pencil drawing, however, the flair and gusto of his technique could easily turn this into a sweetly colored narrative. He evidently used pan colors rather than tubes.