The sitter was the wife of Charles Deering, Chicago businessman, important benefactor of the Art Institute, and lifelong friend and patron of artist John Singer Sargent. In this half-length portrait, the painter depicted Marion Deering seated with her right arm resting on a chairback, her eyes engaging the viewer. Sargent rendered her face and hand with a high degree of finish, skills he had fine-tuned in the 1870s while a student in Paris. The broader handling of paint in her dress and its lace embellishments signals Sargent’s facility with the tactile and expressive possibilities of paint. Indeed, in the mid-1880s, Sargent not only worked in portraiture, but also experimented with the themes and vocabularies of Impressionism.
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