La signora Kate A. Moore

1884 was the year John Singer Sargent's Paris career nearly capsized. His portrait of a society beauty, later called Madame X, was mocked at the Salon for its cool nerve, and commissions from cautious Parisians grew scarce. Wealthy Americans in the city were bolder. Kate Moore, born in Pittsburgh and by now a formidable Paris hostess, sat for this full-length in the same period, a tall, dark, commanding picture nearly six feet high. Sargent gives her the assured presence of someone used to running a grand household, the near-black dress rendered in long fluid strokes. Within two years he gave up on Paris and moved to London, where portraits like this one made his fortune. The painting later entered the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.