Madame Paul Escudier (Louise Lefèvre)

By 1882 Sargent was a young American making his name in Paris, still two years from the Madame X portrait that would briefly wreck his standing there. This is a quieter kind of daring. Louise Lefevre was the wife of a Parisian friend, Paul Escudier, and rather than pose her against a flattering backdrop, Sargent set her in her own apartment and let most of the room fall into shadow. The light finds her face, one hand and the pale front of her dress, and the rest sinks away. He seems less concerned with a polished society likeness than with how a real Parisian interior looked with the daylight coming from one side. She lived until 1950, long enough to watch her husband's friend become one of the most sought-after portraitists of the age.