John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925) was a leading and prolific portrait painter. The son of two American expatriates, he lived and worked in Europe for most of his life. At the time portraiture was still considered a conventional, if not low, form of artistic expression, and Sargent’s sketchy style, informed by a personal interpretation of the French avant-guards, did much to rejuvenate the genre. His long brushstrokes and colourful palette, which flattered his sitters and resulted in a substantial number of commissions, are still recognizable today as an unmistakable personal marque. While Sargent’s reputation suffered immediately after his death because of rising antiSemitism throughout Europe (the artist had many Jewish clients) and his supposed homosexuality (homophobia becoming particularly prominent following the Oscar Wilde trial), he painted many famous subjects during his career as an artist. His sitters include Henry James and Marchesa Antonio de Viti de Marco [née Harriette (Etta) Lathrop Dunham (1864 - 1939)], who donated several of the letters in this box and to whom his letter here is addressed. Written in late 1891 in New York, the letter shows Sargent’s familiarity with and consideration for Miss Dunham. A generous hostess and herself an American expatriate, Etta Dunham was the daughter of a banker and the beloved feminist wife of Southern Italian nobleman Marchese Antonio de Viti de Marco, a renowned economist who resigned from his official involvement with the Italian government in 1931 because of his unwillingness to take oaths of obedience under the Fascist regime. The couple married in 1895, the same year that Sargent produced a splendid portrait of her, now in a private collection. After their wedding in Florence, the couple settled at Palazzo Orsini in Via di Monte Savello, the Roman residence of the Marchese which also hosted the editorial offices of his newspaper titled Il Giornale degli economisti.
