The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy

The year 1907 was a turning point for John Singer Sargent, as he daringly stepped away from his successful career as a portraitist in favor of plein air (outdoor) painting. This lively work aptly captures that moment of transition, combining landscape and portraiture in a composition that speaks to friendship and painterly pursuits while also celebrating color, surface, and fleeting effects of light and movement. The couple is Wilfrid and Jane Emmet de Glehn, professional artists and Sargent’s frequent traveling companions.

Although The Fountain has the appearance of spontaneity, Sargent was frequently interrupted by rain as he worked. He thus completed it over several days, requiring his friends to pose at length.

The physical object — Oil on canvas, 71.4 × 56.5 cm (28 1/8 × 22 1/4 in.) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. John Singer Sargent's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of 19th-century American studio practice.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. The sitter is constructed: clothes, pose, and attributes were chosen to project status, virtue, and lineage.

Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how John Singer Sargent's output from this period is understood.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”