This weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time. I must have taken at least a hundred photos of the artwork. I simply had too many favorite paintings ranging from the early American art to the Medieval European collection. It was fascinating to see paintings that I had only seen reproductions of in person. The painting below is one of John Singer Sargent’s that I had never seen in color previously. I love the vivid blue used in the dress which carries over into the chair, as well as the way Sargent chose to position the figure in between the two windows.

John Singer Sargent, American, 1856-1925
Madame Paul Escudier (Louise Lefevre), 1882
Oil on canvas
51 x 36 in.

Below are details of the painting.

“John Singer Sargent painted at least two portraits of Louise Escudier. He may have met her through her husband, a lawyer who sometimes worked on behalf of artists. This picture grew out of a series of freely rendered views of women in darkened interiors that the artist produced in Venice between 1880 and 1882. It combines the Impressionists’ loose brushwork with a heightened charoscuro drawn from Spanish Old Masters such as Diego Velazquez. In such early paintings, Sargent deliberately undercut traditional portrait conventions, prioritizing dramatic effects of light and dark and the creation of radically asymmetrical, yet balanced compositions over clear depictions of his sitters. These portraits helped to establish Sargent’s reputation in Paris as an exciting and original painter.”

Check back to see other featured paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago.