Impressionist & Modern

Provenance:

Commissioned from the Artist by Mr. and Mrs. Edward Burckhardt.

Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, NY, (possibly) acquired from the Burckhardt family.

Kennedy Galleries, New York, NY, acquired from the above.

Private Collection, USA, acquired from the above circa 1972.

 

Literature:

Ormond & E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The early portraits, New Haven, CT & London, 1998, vol. I, pp. 125-27, no. 127 (illus.)

 

One of the greatest portraitists of the Edwardian era, John Singer Sargent both reflected and created the iconography of a period in much the same way as Van Dyck, Reynolds, Lawrence, David or Ingres before him. Over the course of his lengthy international career, he painted more than 2,000 watercolours and some 900 oils, of sitters ranging from politicians such as American President Theodore Roosevelt (1903), to fellow artists including Claude Monet (1885) and Paul César Helleu (1889), to society beauties and millionaire industrialists. This innovative and daring early portrait, painted on a grand scale, depicts Mrs Edward Burckhardt and her daughter Louise. The Burckhardts were close friends of the artist – Louise, at one time, was nearly engaged to Sargent – and his staunch supporters, commissioning this work in the wake of the Madame X scandal of 1884.