1878, John Singer Sargent, Among the Olive Trees, Capri -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label: Sargent traveled to Capri seeking inspiration for a major exhibition picture. The island provided the ideal setting for him to create an image of rural life that would appeal to contemporary fantasies of nature unspoiled by industrial capitalism. Playing on the stereotype that the people of Capri were descended from Greek and Roman settlers, he hired his favorite local model, Rosina Ferrara (1861-1934), whom he considered an embodiment of this connection to antiquity, and presented her intertwined with the gnarled branches of an ancient olive tree. Sargent sent this so-called Mediterranean idyll to the Paris Salon in 1879 along with a portrait of his teacher Carolus-Duran, to great acclaim.
1878, John Singer Sargent, Among the Olive Trees, Capri -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label: Sargent traveled to Capri seeking inspiration for a major exhibition picture. The island provided the ideal setting for him to create an image of rural life that would appeal to contemporary fantasies of nature unspoiled by industrial capitalism. Playing on the stereotype that the people of Capri were descended from Greek and Roman settlers, he hired his favorite local model, Rosina Ferrara (1861-1934), whom he considered an embodiment of this connection to antiquity, and presented her intertwined with the gnarled branches of an ancient olive tree. Sargent sent this so-called Mediterranean idyll to the Paris Salon in 1879 along with a portrait of his teacher Carolus-Duran, to great acclaim.