Madame Ramon Subercaseaux

Around 1880 Sargent was a painter in his mid-20s trying to build a name in Paris, and commissions from wealthy foreigners living in the city were how a young portraitist got started. This is one of them. The sitter is Amalia Errazuriz, newly married to Ramon Subercaseaux, a Chilean diplomat and amateur painter posted to Paris. Sargent set her at the piano in the couple's own apartment, decorated in the fashionable Aesthetic taste of the moment, her hand resting on the keys and a single red flower in the other. She was about 20. The portrait travelled with him as a kind of calling card, one of the works that first got Paris talking about him.