Robert de Cévrieux

Robert de Cévrieux was seven when Sargent painted him in Paris in 1879, and he is still dressed as a little child, in a skirted suit with buttons down the jacket and a large red bow at the collar. Small boys wore skirts until they were breeched, put into their first trousers. Under one arm he holds a squirming pet dog, and he leans to the side to keep hold of it. Sargent's teacher Carolus-Duran had shown pictures of his own children holding their pets at the Salons of 1874 and 1875, and the pupil took up the idea with looser, quicker brushwork. Children made up about a third of the portraits Sargent was commissioned to paint in those years. Almost nothing else is known about the sitter, except that he kept the picture for more than 40 years. In November 1921 he sold it himself to the New York dealers Knoedler, and in March 1922 the Museum of Fine Arts bought it for $9,500.