Madame Paul Escudier (Louise Lefevre)
John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925)
1882
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 129.5 × 91.4 cm (51 × 36 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Bequest of Brooks McCormick
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In this depiction of Frenchwoman Louise Escudier, John Singer Sargent undercut traditional portrait conventions by prioritizing the dramatic effects of light and dark in a Parisian apartment. The picture grew out of a series of atmospheric views of working-class women in darkened interiors that the artist produced on two trips to Venice between 1880 and 1882. Undertaken in Paris shortly thereafter, this painting transforms those techniques in the portrayal of a fashionable sitter, similarly combining the gestural brushwork of the Impressionists with a heightened chiaroscuro (light and shade) drawn from Spanish Baroque artists such as Diego Velázquez. Such works helped to establish Sargent’s reputation in Paris as a daring and original painter.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
