Muddy Alligators and World War I: John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent's Lady Agnew of
Lochnaw in the National Gallery of Scotland.

John Singer Sargent has been described as a "relic of the Gilded Age" of American politics and never really given any consideration as a serious painter.  One of his most famous portrait paintings, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw from 1893 clearly undermines this suggestion:  the beautiful woman exhibits her power by her very straight, forward and unflinching gaze; her white gown pulled over the muscle of her crossed, left leg is a symbol of her will power (and it's "crossed," I might add) while the great "patch" of nearly pure white fabric covering the left knee communicates faith.  The wall coloring is perfectly balanced, hinting at green but perhaps closer to blue, and this creates a cloud of ambiguity around her.
But this is the most important element of the painting:  her comfortable, beautiful chair is pushed into a corner.  If we play a political game for a moment, Lady Agnew is not a socialite beauty, rather, a symbol of Scotland itself.

The Stone of Scone in the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey, 1855.

When one is "pushed into a corner," it's not a very comfortable position to be in; so it appears that she has been given this comfortable chair to make it easier.  It's not the Stone of Scone, the traditional throne upon which Scottish kings were crowned which was removed to Westminster Abbey by the English; Lady Agnew's chair is a symbol of the material wealth accumulated as a result of union, the union between Lord and Lady Agnew, or of England and Scotland.
Lady Agnew is beautiful and wealthy, pampered and safe, but also, a prisoner:  her golden bracelet on her left wrist indicates that she's bound; a prisoner may be bound in chains of gold, but she is a prisoner nonetheless (see the blog posted below on Ingres for additional comparisons of high society portraits).  Now the ambiguous coloring of the wall behind her suggests that she is being lured by either hopes (if it's green) of future independence or lulled to sleep (if it's closer to blue) by her comfortable position in the corner.
Now that we understand Sargent's vocabulary a little better, let's go to some bigger political games.

Muddy Alligators, watercolor over graphite on paper, 1917.

There are two hints pertaining to what this watercolor of Floridian reptiles is saying:  there are six alligators and the year is 1917.  World War I was dragging on in muddy trench warfare (like the bodies of the alligators) and America was "finally getting in."  The six gators represent the six European Superpowers of the day:  Prussia, Russia, Austria-Hungary, England, France and Italy.  If you look at the bottom of the painting, the water line comes into the space of the viewer, or, the viewer is coming into the space of the waterline, the front line.  It is literally "crossing the pond" (the Atlantic Ocean) to enter the War.

For years, soliders lived in mud, fought in mud and died in mud.

Here is the important point:  "muddy."  Muddy refers to the new tactic that was being used in World War I:  trench warfare.  The mud would accumulate in the trenches and become the biggest enemy that soldiers had to fight because it was a perfect medium for disease.
The medium used was pencil on paper, then painted in with watercolors, and it's an uncanny statement of how events unfolded:  treaties were signed between all the powers (the graphite on paper) and then the blood and carnage of the warring states filled in the empty places of what all those treaties actually meant, blood and carnage (the dripping watercolors).  This was Sargent's statement on war:  like the reptiles from antiquity, man hungers for power and gains it through war, and now, we've been dragged into it.
As always, much more could be written about both these works by John Singer Sargent, however, this is just a blogspot.
(I would like to make a personal note:  I LOVE THE BRITISH.  Given the current administration's continuous insults to our steadfast allies, I would like to emphasize my great and sincere admiration for the British people and their culture, and beg their pardon for the way "certain" politicians in power for the moment have treated them).