Portrait of Mrs. Daniel Sargent Curtis, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

The aura of Venice incited the attentions of countless artists and writers in the 19th century, including American expatriate painter John Singer Sargent. When in Venice, Sargent frequented the Palazzo Barbaro on the Grand Canal, an opulent palace owned by his distant relation Daniel Curtis and Daniel’s wife, Ariana. The Curtis home became a gathering place for Robert Browning, Henry James, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Edith Wharton, and other cultural luminaries in the 1880s. In this portrait, Sargent paints Ariana Wormeley Curtis (1833–1922), his capable hostess. Curtis was the author of a play titled The Spirit of Seventy-Six, which satirizes the suffrage movement by postulating a future in which the women hold professional offices while the men tend to the children. Sargent poses Ariana against a restrained black background that accents the slight flush of her skin and her simple white adornments in an image that conveys his subject’s intelligence as well as her graciousness.