Le Docteur Pozzi chez lui

Sargent was 25 and building a name in Paris when he painted this, his first full-length portrait of a man. The sitter is Samuel-Jean Pozzi, a Parisian surgeon who helped modernise gynaecology in France and was as famous for his looks and his love affairs as for his medicine. Sargent kept none of the usual props of a doctor's portrait, no dark suit and no instruments. Instead Pozzi stands at home in a floor-length scarlet dressing gown, one hand at his collar, the other toying with the cord at his waist, the red filling almost the whole canvas. The long, careful hands are the one nod to his profession. Sargent first showed the picture in London in 1882, simply as A Portrait.