A woman lifting her veil over the smoke of a silver censer

A woman stands in a courtyard of bare white plaster, holding the edges of a pale cream veil out over her head so that it makes a hood, her face lowered towards the smoke rising from a silver censer on the floor in front of her. Her robe is the same near-white cream, hung with silver ornaments and a chain across the chest, with a flash of orange lining at the sleeve. She stands on a rug patterned in red, black and gold, on tiles of pink and blue-green. Stepped white mouldings run along the top left.

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was the leading portrait painter of his generation, born in Florence to American parents and trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran. The scandal of Madame X drove him to London in 1884, where he painted the aristocracy and the great merchant families for two decades before abandoning commissioned portraiture in 1907 for watercolour, landscape and mural work. He travelled constantly — Venice, the Alps, Spain, the Middle East, Florida — painting in oil and watercolour with a bravura touch that was widely imitated and never matched. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Tate and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.