Lady with the Rose (Charlotte Louise Burckhardt)  1882

Sargent’s sitter for this portrait was the twenty-year-old daughter of a Swiss merchant and his American wife, members of the artist’s cosmopolitan circle in Paris. The monochromatic palette, shallow space, and emphasis on the figure’s silhouette pay tribute to the Spanish master Diego Velázquez, whose work Sargent’s Parisian teacher, Carolus-Duran, had encouraged him to s...