Valdemosa, Majorca: Thistles and Herbage on a Hillside

By 1908 John Singer Sargent was the most sought-after portrait painter in the English-speaking world and thoroughly sick of it. He had begun turning down commissions to travel and paint whatever he pleased, and that autumn he went to Valldemossa, a hill town on the Spanish island of Majorca, with his sister Emily. Instead of the grand view he chose a scrap of rocky ground, thistles and dry weeds climbing a slope in the sun. He once said that enormous views and huge skies did not tempt him, and here you can see him mean it, working fast and close over a patch you could cover with a blanket. The National Gallery of Art now lists it under the wild olive roots tangled in among the thistles.