Rue à Venise

Sargent was in his mid-twenties when he spent time in Venice around 1882, and instead of the Grand Canal he painted its poorer back lanes. Here a young woman, thought to be a local model named Gigia Viani, walks fast down a narrow flagstoned street, kicking her skirt forward, her eyes cast down. Two men lounge in the shadow to her left and watch her pass. Sargent builds the whole picture around that tension, the woman hurrying through the stares of idle men in a half-lit alley. He kept the palette to browns and greys with the one pale figure catching the light. In 1888 an owner handed the painting to the architect Stanford White in exchange for his professional work.