L'Italienne (At the Fountain)

Mary Lublin has written, "The young American certainly absorbed Bonnat's preference for large-scale portraiture and direct, unpretentious presentation of the model. L'Italienne, also known as At the Fountain (1875) was Pearce's first full-scale figure subject. This portrayal of a studio model dressed in an Italian peasant costume, standing beside a stone fountain, presented they type of sentimental peasant genre subject prevalent at the Salons of the 1860s and 1870s. Its compositional elements recall Bonnat's Girl by a Fountain (1875, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) from the same date, in which a barefoot peasant girl tries to drink from an outdoor fountain. The Bonnat was said to have been a subject commissioned by American socialite and collector Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, reputedly the richest woman in America, which would have provided an additional incentive for the determined pupil. Pearce may also have remembered William Morris Hunt's enthusiasm for Jean-Baptiste Corot's melancholic Italian models in ethnic costume. While L'Italienne lacks the complexity of pose and handling of Bonnat's work, the composition ignores the anecdotal in favor of a more direct experience of the sweet young model."

She continues, "When the painting was shown at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, the critic for the New York Times complained it was 'the life school again,' but acknowledged that there was 'a certain power of expression about the girl's face which makes you look at it.' Pearce's emphasis on expression and demeanor, as well as a palette that was described as 'rich without being obtrusive' and his 'naturalistic rendering of textures' reveal a glimpse of the more mature artist." (A Rare Elegance: The Paintings of Charles Sprague Pearce, New York, 1993, p. 11)