Alpine Pool

By 1907 Sargent was the most sought-after portrait painter in the English-speaking world, and thoroughly tired of it. He had begun turning down the commissions that made him rich and spending his summers wandering with friends and family instead. This was painted on one of those trips, at a tiny hamlet called Purtud in the Italian Alps, where he kept returning to the same small mountain stream. There is no sitter and no flattery here, just cold clear water over stones. He set his easel close and looked straight down, chasing the way sunlight breaks on a moving surface, until the rocks and reflections dissolve into something very close to pure pattern.