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Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess d’Abernon

John Singer Sargent

1904

John Singer Sargent was the preeminent portraitist of the Gilded Age. With his brilliant bravura brushwork, flair for rich colors, and dramatic juxtaposition of light and dark tones, he made striking images of the American and European elite. Born to American parents in Italy, Sargent spent most of his life in Europe, where he traveled extensively, studying the work of the Old Masters. He greatly admired Diego Velázquez’s realism and Frans Hals’s painterly brush strokes, both of which he would incorporate into his own work. Sargent painted this portrait of Lady Helen Vincent in Venice. A glimpse of the Grand Canal is visible through the balustrade in the lower-left corner. He elongates Lady Helen’s limbs, underscoring her gracefulness, while the black dress emphasizes her milk-white skin, a sign of her nobility. Her direct but pensive gaze suggests her intellect: she was a member of The Souls, a salon of prominent intellectuals that included Henry James and Edith Wharton.

  • Titles Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess d'Abernon (Proper)@Portrait of Lady Helen Vincent (1866-1954) (Label Display)
  • Artist John Singer Sargent, American, 1856 - 1925
  • Medium oil on canvas
  • Dimensions 62 1/2 x 42 1/2 in. (158.8 x 108 cm) frame: 72 7/8 × 52 1/4 × 5 in. (185.1 × 132.7 × 12.7 cm)
  • Credit Line Museum purchase with funds provided by John Bohorfoush, the 1984 Museum Dinner and Ball, and the Museum Store, 1984.121
  • Work Type painting
  • Classification Paintings

See More of the Collection

In this black and white photograph, a woman sits in an upholstered arm chair, her feet curled beneath her body. She extends both of her arms onto the arms of the chair. She wears a black jacket and white shirt. The chair sits in the corner of a worn room, and behind the chair a lamp rises above the woman’s head, crowned with a mirrored, fringed lamp shade.
Lady in the White House, Donald E. McAdoo, pencil on paper
Autumn Landscape, William Merritt Post, oil on canvas
Seated Child, Paul Resika, crayon lithograph