A young woman in black holding a single white rose

A young woman stands full length against a pale grey-cream ground, her weight on one hip and her head turned to us. Her dress is black silk with a fitted bodice, a high lace collar and lace at the cuffs, the skirt swagged and bowed at the side; a red-gold coil of hair is pinned high. In her raised left hand she holds a single white rose, painted in four or five strokes. The floor is the same warm grey as the wall, so the figure reads as a black silhouette. Inscribed and signed at the lower 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.