The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy

As one of the most sought-after and prolific portraitists of international high society, American expatriate John Singer Sargent painted the cosmopolitan world to which he belonged with elegance and a bravura touch. Born to American parents residing in Italy, Sargent spent his early adult life in Paris, moving to London in the mid-1880s. The artist traveled frequently, and it was during these trips that he experimented most extensively with painting en plein air, or outdoors. Set in a sunlit garden in the central Italian town of Frascati, this charming double portrait depicts Sargent¡¯s friends and fellow artists Wilfrid and Jane Emmet de Glehn. The painting is filled with light, displaying Sargent¡¯s characteristically dazzling surface articulated with thick impasto and virtuoso brushwork. Jane described the work as a ¡°most amusing and killingly funny picture¡± in a letter to her sister Lydia. She continued ¡°I am all in white with a white painting blouse and a pale blue veil around