I want it on the record that it is VERY VERY HARD right now for me not to post my reversed-and-contrast-enhanced version of the photo of Sinéad’s notebook that was shared on the patrons-only twitter yesterday.
This is me being good. Incredibly nerdishly embarrassingly unable to restrain myself, yet doing so.
I really want my joke from the livestream chat (re: hamstrings) to turn out to be accurate. And there is at least one other piece of evidence I can think of that tends in that direction. But I can’t see how that matches up with “spooky forest”, which at this point has to be considered a rock-solid clue about the next project.
I got excited taking his picture because I was anticipating how you would appreciate the backdrop. The black mustard bloom was kind of out of control at the marsh yesterday.
Tomorrow, we sit down for our weirdest meeting yet.
Light the Raven Signal!! Something is happening!
I tried not to engage in irresponsible speculation, but, well…
So. What do we know? The script:
Sarah: How did you hear about this guy again?
Sean: Uh, my friend Kyle from fantasy baseball said he helped him out of a jam once.
MK: Isn’t it weird to have an office on a sound stage?
Sarah: I mean at least it’s on a studio lot. That’s gotta be a good sign, right?
[Title]: Who is Shipwrecked meeting?
[Title]: Find out tomorrow! youtube.com/shipwreckedcomedy
Things we know about the person they’re meeting:
1. He’s a he.
2. I don’t think he’s someone famous, since at least in-world they sound like they’re not super-familiar with him already. Sarah asks Sean “how did you hear about this guy again?” I think if he was someone well-known the line would have been worded differently. (”How did you get this meeting again?” “How did you get in touch with this guy?” Something like that.) (But see discussion of floor wax below.)
3. He has an office on a sound stage on a studio lot. (At least it’s a studio lot in-world. Though in reality it could have been shot at the YouTube space. I took a quick look at some of the recent BTS videos on MK’s channel without spotting any obvious correlation with what they’re wearing in this video, though I don’t suppose that means anything.)
The “office” offers some interesting set-dressing clues. The guy they’re meeting has a nice-looking office chair to sit in, while the Shipwreckies are in folding chairs (but nice folding chairs with padded seats):
Let’s take a closer look at the desk:
There’s a green-lampshade lamp and a dark… something… on the edge of the desk closest to Our Heroes (partly obscured by Sarah’s head). There’s a Rolodex. And there are three VHS tapes leaning against the lamp. I can’t quite tell what movies they are, but it would be cool if they were significant.
Here they are zoomed in:
Here they are from the reverse angle:
Anyone recognize any of those?
The other interesting thing on the desk is this: On the far corner (from the Fearless Foursome’s perspective) there’s what looks like a dark case of some kind. The lid is open, and there’s what looks like a card or a piece of paper with writing on it stuck on the lid, slightly askew:
No idea what that is, but I’m guessing it’s involved in the scene we’ll see tomorrow.
Backing up and putting on my speculation hat, what do I think?
I think it’s a new project (obviously). I think whoever comes through the door is going to be someone cool and exciting for Shipwrecked fans (since otherwise it would feel like a bait-and-switch to tease his identity so hard).
Something that would be cool would be if it were a character from a previous Shipwrecked production: Poe (which would take some editing), HG, someone from Gilded Lily…
Hm. OR… he could be a floor wax AND a whipped topping. That is, he could be a real person we’d recognize and be excited to see, but in-character as a fictional character involved in whatever the new project is.
Disclaimer: Not an art historian. Just a Sargent fan.
It’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison, because some works (El Jaleo, Gassed) were huge; more than 10 feet long. For works like that, or works where a lot was riding on the painting as he tried to build his reputation, he spent a looooong time. For El Jaleo, one of his first works to catch the attention of the Paris art world, he worked intermittently for nearly two years.
For Madame X he began sketching in June, 1883, and didn’t finish the painting until October or thereabouts, so, five months? After the disastrous reception of Madame X at the 1884 Salon he relocated to England, where his next major work was Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, which he worked on for more than a year, from September 1885 until October 1886. The time on that one was extended by the fact that Sargent chose to paint it en plein air in natural light, and specifically at dusk, when the light that he wanted to capture was just right.
An answer that might come closer to what you’re really after would be, how long did he spend on his commissioned portraits? These were his bread and butter, the type of painting he did under a certain amount of time pressure from a paying customer. There were two phases for these: Phase one was a series of “sittings”, described thusly in the Sargent wikipedia article:
After securing a commission through negotiations which he carried out, Sargent would visit the client’s home to see where the painting was to hang. He would often review a client’s wardrobe to pick suitable attire. Some portraits were done in the client’s home, but more often in his studio, which was well-stocked with furniture and background materials he chose for proper effect.[49] He usually required eight to ten sittings from his clients, although he would try to capture the face in one sitting. He usually kept up pleasant conversation and sometimes he would take a break and play the piano for his sitter. Sargent seldom used pencil or oil sketches, and instead laid down oil paint directly.[50]
He wrote to Ada Rehan (an actress whose portrait he’d been commissioned to paint, and who was anxious about the length of the sittings due to a recent bout of ill health), “I should argue, with more truth than seems likely, that a great many people find it rather a rest to [sit for a portrait] than otherwise, and also that some of my best results have happened to be obtained with a few sittings… (Lady Agnew was done in six sittings), but I always admit beforehand that it may take me much longer.” After the sittings there was then a longer period in which Sargent would finish the portrait; in the case of Rehan’s portrait Sargent worked on the piece from the spring of 1894 until March of 1895, so roughly a year.
Calendar time from start to finish is only one way of looking at it, though. At the peak of his portrait-painting Sargent was producing many portraits each year, so clearly the work on them overlapped.
Also, the monumental portraits were relatively time-consuming compared to smaller paintings. You didn’t specify portraits; you just said “paintings.” So, looking beyond the portraits (which he mostly stopped painting after he closed his studio in 1907), in the course of his career he produced roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors. Ignoring the charcoal and pencil sketches, that makes 2,900 painted works in a career that spanned roughly 45 years. Doing the math on that, and taking no account of time spent traveling/vacationing, it appears that he averaged one finished painting every 5.7 days.
