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
Special thanks to Philip Rsheph, of London, a friend of the JSS Gallery, for help with this image and information.
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
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