John Singer Sargent had deep and lasting ties with the city of Boston and the MFA; his works are among the great treasures of our collection. Our holdings are the most comprehensive of any museum and encompass every medium in which he worked: paintings, watercolors, drawings, sculpture, and murals, as well as the Sargent Archive. The proposed purchase of Violet Sargent presents us with a rare opportunity to expand our representation of the artist’s oeuvre.

This intimate sketch, made during Sargent’s early years in Paris, depicts the artist’s sister Violet (1870-1955), who was fourteen years younger than the painter. Sargent had only recently arrived in the French capital, where in 1874 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and studied with portraitist Carolus-Duran. His precocious talent amazed both his fellow students and his teachers. Here, directly applying broad strokes of thin paint, Sargent captured Violet’s watchful expression, ignoring fine detail to create an impression of movement and malleability that are perfectly suited for his fledgling subject. Family and friends were important early sitters for Sargent and many of them, especially Violet, would continue to pose for him throughout their lives. Violet Sargent married Francis Ormond in 1891; after her brother’s death in 1925 she, along with her sister Emily, saw to the disposition of his estate and became generous donors of his work to museums, the MFA among them (over 300 objects). Sargent’s portraits of children, most notably The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, are highlights of our collection, and this tender, serious image of his young sister shares something of the gravity and mystery of that later work. Its lack of sentimentality is entirely characteristic of Sargent’s images of young sitters, whom he treated as distinct and often serious individuals.

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