Manner of John Singer Sargent Portrait of a Young Lady

An original late 19th-century oil painting, Manner of John Singer Sargent, Portrait of a Young Lady.

A wonderful portrait sketch in oil on wooden panel of a late-Victorian or early Edwardian young lady. The sitter's auburn hair blends gently with the background tones, allowing the highlighted detail to the face and dress to delicately shine.

The dress is punctuated with rose details to the neckline, which are painted in suggestive dabs of impressionistic colour, whilst the face is modelled more finely: it is to the sitter's eyes, nose and coral lips that our eye is most compellingly drawn. The simplicity of palette, freshness of the rose buds and the slight smile to the lips seem to convey something of the young sitter's character, her innocence captured in a fleeting moment.

The painting bears no signature or inscription, but the impressionistic spontaneity, without underdrawing, and the shimmering palette resemble the style of John Singer Sargent (1856–1925).

In oil on wooden panel, cut to an oval. The paint is impasto in some areas and in others the bare primed wood is showing through.