Capri had been a favorite destination for painters since the early 1800s. Travelers were drawn both by the natural beauties of the island’s turquoise water and dramatic coastline and by the seemingly exotic nature of its
history and inhabitants. It was also known for the exceptional beauty of its people and for its relaxed way of life, as well as for the cultural and architectural legacy of ancient Phoenician, Greek, and Roman settlers
and conquerors. Twenty years after Sargent’s visit in 1878, the American painter Francis Millet captured something of the appeal of Capri’s rural agricultural society for artists with his remark that “the primitive
life of the peasant remains much the same in all essential features . . . undisturbed by the gleam of the white umbrella or the red flash of the Baedeker.” At the time of Sargent’s stay on the island, several artist
friends of his were also visiting, perhaps an added inducement for his selection of the place as his summer painting destination.
Sargent, like other artists before and after him, was in search of the exotic. His trip to Capri in August of 1878 was one of the many sojourns made to such picturesque locales during the course of his career. During his
stay on the island, Sargent was befriended by an English painter, Frank Hyde, who had a studio at the abandoned monastery of Santa Teresa. Sargent used both Hyde’s studio and his exceptional model, Rosina Ferrara, who
was described by Sargent’s early biographer, the Hon. Evan Charteris, as “an Ana-Capri girl, a magnificent type, about seventeen years of age, her complexion a rich nut brown, with a mass of blue-black hair, very beautiful,
and of an Arab type.”
A Capriote is one of several images Sargent made of Ferrara in profile. Here Sargent adapted the conventional image of picturesque types so popular at the Paris Salon in a more lyrical composition, perhaps inspired by
the late dreamlike forest compositions [17.3234] of the mid-nineteenth century French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Ferrara’s striking, somewhat contrived pose adds stylistic innovation to this tradition. Her
twisted stance echoes the forms of the branches, expressing a kinship between them of wild and natural beauty. Sargent equates his model with a classically inspired dryad, making her an elemental part of the wild Capri
landscape.
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In 1878, Sargent traveled to the Italian island of Capri in search of exotic scenery to use in his subject pictures. Many of the works he produced there feature the popular local model Rosina Ferrara, who was admired for
her blue-black hair and olive skin. In A Capriote, Sargent painted Ferrara in the midst of an olive grove, with her arms twined around a tree, echoing its twisted shape. By using this contrived pose and depicting her
striking features in profile, Sargent made his model seem to be an elemental part of the wild Capri landscape.
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