Girl Fishing, Sargent 1913 Card

Sargent would become increasingly less interested in executing the society portraits for which he was famous and would take refuge in trips to the Alps, Venice and the Mediterranean with members of his family. San Vigilio is a small fishing village on a point at the southern end of Lake Garda in Italy and this painting was executed in 1913 on his last European sojourn before the outbreak of World War I. Sargent would travel with a variety of veils and shawls and the like to dress his models on such trips. The woman in the present painting, possibly Jane de Glehn, wears a beige cashmere shawl with a paisley border that is seen repeatedly in Sargent's paintings from his travels in the Alps and around Italy.