|
|
The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy - 1907
A delightfully charming painting of Jane and Wilfred Glehn, artist friends of Sargent. It is a sunny image in its setting and in its depiction of a married couple openly confident in their relationship. They are tacitly enjoying each others company and their dispositions keep the work from becoming an overtly romantic idyll. Look how wonderfully the symphony of whites in their clothes and the fountain playfully augment each other. Jane wrote in a letter to a friend; " He (Sargent) has struck Wilfred in looking at my sketch with rather a contemputous expression as much as to say 'Can you do plain sewing any better?'.........Wilfried is in shirt sleeves, very idle and good for nothing and our heads come against the great panache of the fountain"
|
