Lady with the Rose

John Singer Sargent · 1882

Lady with the Rose - John Singer Sargent

A twenty-year-old woman in black stands almost life size, holding a single rose. Sargent painted her in 1882, and Paris applauded.

The story behind the painting

Lady with the Rose is an 1882 portrait by John Singer Sargent of Charlotte Louise Burckhardt, who was twenty years old at the time. She was the daughter of a Swiss merchant from Basel, and her family belonged to the artist's cosmopolitan circle in Paris. Sargent was then building his reputation there. He had trained with the French portraitist Carolus-Duran, whose studio taught direct painting with a loaded brush rather than careful academic underdrawing, and by the early 1880s he was exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon, where his full-length portraits of women were well received.

What to look for

The canvas is tall, about 213.4 by 113.7 cm, so the young woman appears at full length and close to life size. Look at the restrained palette: the picture is built from monochromatic tones, and it is her silhouette that carries the composition. Against these quiet tones, the rose she holds becomes the small focal point the title names. The effect is calm and direct rather than decorative, a portrait made from shape, tone and a single flower.

Meaning and intent

That restraint has a clear source. The Wikipedia article notes that the monochrome tones and emphasis on silhouette recall the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, whose work Carolus-Duran had encouraged Sargent to study. Sargent travelled to Spain and studied Velázquez closely, absorbing his technique. In this portrait the lesson becomes a way of letting a young woman's presence speak without distraction. There is also a quiet sadness in hindsight: Louise later became the first wife of the fruit importer Roger Ackerley, father of the writer J. R. Ackerley, and she died after only two years of marriage, in 1892.

Legacy

The portrait was exhibited to great acclaim at the Paris Salon of 1882. It belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it is on view in Gallery 771. Two years later Sargent's Portrait of Madame X would cause a scandal in Paris and prompt his move to London, which makes this earlier, celebrated Salon success a glimpse of his Paris years at their brightest. Standing before it today, visitors meet the same quiet figure and single rose that won over the Salon audience in 1882.

Lo sapevi?

Wikipedia · Wikipedia: John Singer Sargent · Wikidata

woman · portrait · Metropolitan Museum of Art · portrait · rose

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