Sargent painted this forest hillside when he was stranded in the Austrian Tyrol after the outbreak of World War I. He depicts one of his traveling companions, British landscape painter Adrian Stokes, surrounded by three women, the pupils of the title (Stokes’s maid posed for all three of the female figures). The rocky foreground occupies more than half the canvas and almost seems to be the real subject of the picture. But the title returns the focus to the figures, slyly raising the question of who is the master—Stokes or Sargent?

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