Italian youth stays in the 1870s

In Capri, young Sargent discovers a light, an architecture and models that release his touch: Rosina Ferrara becomes the face of a whole between portrait, outdoor study and cosmopolitan experience.

John Singer Sargent was born in Florence in 1856 to expatriate American parents and grew up on European travels. After initial Italian training, in 1874 he entered the Parisian studio of Carolus-Duran, who taught him direct painting based on great values. Stays in Capri in the 1870s played an important role in this artistic youth. The island offered Sargent white houses, roofs, Mediterranean vegetation and a light very different from Parisian workshops. There he met Rosina Ferrara, a young Capriote whose features, dark hair and presence also attracted other foreign artists. Sargent represents her together taken up in profile, in bust or in open-air scenes. These works should not be reduced to exoticism: above all they show how he seeks to unite figure, movement, light and material. In Capri's Head of a Girl, the tight framing gives the face sculptural force. On a roof, the silhouette is measured by the white of the walls and the luminous expanse. Capri's views broaden this research to architecture and landscape. The painter combines rapid observation and precise construction, announcing the virtuosity of large portraits but also the freedom of his future watercolors. A faithful reproduction must preserve the warmth of the skin tones, the colored blacks, the sunny whites, the frankness of the touches and the balance between model and Mediterranean decor. The "Capri by John Singer Sargent" selection notably compares View of Capri - John Singer Sargent and Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Girl by Capri - John Singer Sargent. His reading favors light.

Capri teaches Sargent that light can be a portrait: she models Rosina Ferrara, cuts through roofs and gives each gesture an immediate presence.