Portrait
of Dorothy Barnard
John
Singer Sargent
-- American painter
1889
Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge, UK
Oil on
canvas
70.5
x
39.4 cm
Lent
by the Syndics
of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, PD54-1949
Jpg: Friend of
the JSS Gallery
(click on the
image to step
closer)
From:
Fitzwilliam Museum
The subject of this
unfinished portrait
was Miss Dorothy Barnard (1878-1949), daughter of the painter and
illustrator
of Dickens -- Frederick
Barnard (1848-96), one of Sargent's friends from the artistic
colony
in the Cotswold village of Broadway,
whom he met for the first time in 1885. Dorothy and her sister Polly
were
the models for the two girls in Sargent's most famous painting,
Carnation,
Lily, Lily, Rose (1885-6; Tate Gallery, London). The present study of
Dorothy
was painted three years later, at Fladbury Rectory, Pershore, in
Worcestershire,
where Sargent had established himself in order to continue his
experiments
with open-air subjects. It was here that some of his most Impressionist
works were painted. Portraits occupied the times when the weather was
bad.
Sargent's reputation as a portrait painter has overshadowed his
accomplishments
in landscape and open-air studies. C G
Notes:
Special thanks to
Philip Rsheph,
of London, a friend
of the JSS Gallery, for help with this image and information.
Provenance
1889: Mrs Frederick
Barnard; bequeathed
to the Misses Barnard; 1949: bequeathed by Miss Dorothy Barnard to the
museum
Exhibitions
Works by the late John
S. Sargent,
RA, London, RA, 1926, no.595; Works by John Singer Sargent RA,
Birmingham
City Museum and Art Gallery, 1964, no. 19; John Singer Sargent and the
Edwardian Age, Leeds Art Galleries, London, National Portrait Gallery
and
Detroit Institute of Art, 1979, no.29
Bibliography
E. Charteris, John
Sargent, 1927,
p. 261; J. W. Goodison, Catalogue of Paintings, III, British School,
Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge, 1977, p. 216; Stanley Olsen et al., Sargent at
Broadway,
New York and London, 1986, pl. XLI, pp. 63-75
|
