Bead stringers at work in the brown gloom of a Venetian hall

A long bare hall runs back to a lit doorway and a flight of stone steps at the far left, everything painted in browns and grey-greens with the floor as a single broad plane. Three women hold the middle of the picture: two sit close together over a shallow tray of beads, one red-haired with a pale scarf at her throat, the other bent to the work in black; a third stands at the right in a black bodice and a cream flounced skirt, a fan of coloured strands in her hand. Signed at the upper right.

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.