A Venetian Woman

Venice had been part of the Kingdom of Italy for 16 years by 1882, and much of it lived off visitors who came for the lagoon and the Grand Canal. Sargent was 26, on his second working stay, and he spent it in back rooms and side alleys, painting bead-stringers and shop girls in the half-dark. This canvas is nearly eight feet tall, a scale kept for society portraits and Salon entries, and he gave it to the working woman who posed for most of those Venetian pictures. She stands against a dim wall, looks straight out, and lifts her skirt just far enough to show an ankle. He seems to have built it for the Paris Salon and then never sent it in. The jury of 1883 got his portrait of the four Boit daughters instead. Cincinnati acquired the painting in 1972.