Lady with a Blue Veil (Sally Fairchild)

Details

JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925)
Lady with a Blue Veil (Sally Fairchild)
oil on canvas
30 ¹/₄ x 25 ¹/₄ in. (76.8 x 64.1 cm.)
Painted in 1890.

Provenance

The artist.
Estate of the above.
Christie’s, London, 24 July 1925, lot 149A, sold by the above.
David Croal Thomson, London, acquired from the above.
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1925.
Charles S. Carstairs, acquired from the above, 1925.
Charles Carstairs, by descent, 1929.
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1930.
Mr. and Mrs. J. Duncan Pitney, acquired from the above, 1955.
Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey, gift from the above.
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, acquired from the above, 1986.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1989.

Literature

C.M. Mount, John Singer Sargent: A Biography, New York, 1955, pp. 182, 433.
C.M. Mount, John Singer Sargent: A Biography, London, 1957, p. 342.
C.M. Mount, John Singer Sargent: A Biography, New York, 1969, pp. 182, 438.
C.M. Mount, Art Quarterly, 1957, p. 318.
W. Adelson, John Singer Sargent: His Own Work, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1980, n.p.
T. Fairbrother, John Singer Sargent in America, New York, 1986, p. 179.
P. Hills, et al, John Singer Sargent, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1986, p. 132, fig. 95.
S. Olson, John Singer Sargent: His Portrait, London, 1986, p. 139.
R. Ormond, E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the 1890s, vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 2002, pp. 44-45, 177, no. 261, illustrated; vol. V, pp. 41, 61, 200n1.

Exhibition

New York, M. Knoedler & Co., An Exhibition of Paintings by the Late John Singer Sargent, R.A., November 2-14, 1925, no. 12.
Newport, Rhode Island, M. Knoedler & Co., Paintings and Watercolors by John Singer Sargent, August 19-September 3, 1935, no. 7.
Sarasota, Florida, John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art, American Painting, Three Centuries, 1949, no. 28.
Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, A Centennial Exhibition: Sargent’s Boston, January 3-February 7, 1956, p. 95, no. 22, fig. 12, illustrated.
American Federation of Arts, traveling exhibition, American Impressionists: Two Generations, 1963-65, no. 32.
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Aspects of a Collection: 18^thand 19^thCentury American Painting from The Newark Museum, April 1977.

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Lot Essay

John Singer Sargent painted the present portrait of Sally “Sattie” Fairchild at Nahant, Massachusetts where he spent part of the summer of 1890. Notably the first woman allowed to attend lectures at Harvard University, Sattie was one of the eight children of Sargent’s close friend and patron Charles Fairchild and had developed a close friendship with the artist’s sister Violet. In this outdoor sketch, Sargent paints Sattie with her face partially and mysteriously covered by a windblown veil of delicate blue and teal.

When painting Sattie for the present work, Sargent seems to have been inspired by Claude Monet’s Antibes Seen from the Plateau Notre-Dame (1888, Museum of Fine Arts Boston), which he would have recently seen at the Boston dealer Doll and Richards. Sattie’s sister Lucia wrote in her diary on October 2, 1890, “This morning he finished the Blue Veil of Satty, & did another sketch… he, sketching Satty this morning, said he should like to do her just the way the sky of the Monet at Dolls was done – ‘very good for one, that’, he said…” (R. Ormond, E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the 1890s, vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 2002, p. 45). Indeed, the expressively painted veil in the present work resembles the impressionistic brushwork within Monet’s sky and incorporates similar soft blue hues.