Portrait de Vernon Lee

Sargent and the writer who signed herself Vernon Lee had known each other since childhood, when both families lived in Nice and the two expatriate households were neighbours. Her real name was Violet Paget, and by 1881 she was making a name with sharp essays on aesthetics and on ghost stories. Sargent painted this in a single sitting of about three hours, working fast and leaving it deliberately unfinished. You can feel that speed in it, the eyes alert behind the spectacles, the mouth caught as if mid-sentence. He gave the sketch to her afterwards and wrote a dedication straight through the wet paint, to his friend Violet. The two stayed close for the rest of his life.