Arts
In The fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy Sargent portrayed the artist Jane de Glehn sketching the scene in front of her, watched by her artist husband Wilfrid. Jane described sitting for the picture in a letter to her sister on 6 October 1907: ‘Sargent is doing a most amusing and killingly funny picture in oils of me perched on a balustrade painting. It is the very ‘spit’ of me. He has stuck Wilfrid in looking at my sketch with rather a contemptuous expression … I am all in white with a white painting blouse and a pale blue veil around my hat. I look rather like a pierrot, but have rather a worried expression as every painter should have who isn’t a perfect fool, says Sargent. Wilfrid is in short sleeves, very idle and good for nothing’. (quoted in Kilmurray and Ormond, 1988)