Mrs. Charles Deering (Marion Denison Whipple)

The sitter was the wife of Charles Deering, Chicago businessman, important benefactor of the Art Institute, and lifelong friend and patron of artist John Singer Sargent. In this half-length portrait, the painter depicted Marion Deering seated with her right arm resting on a chairback, her eyes engaging the viewer. Sargent rendered her face and hand with a high degree of finish, skills he had fine-tuned in the 1870s while a student in Paris. The broader handling of paint in her dress and its lace embellishments signals Sargent’s facility with the tactile and expressive possibilities of paint. Indeed, in the mid-1880s, Sargent not only worked in portraiture, but also experimented with the themes and vocabularies of Impressionism.