John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

The present work depicts the advancements of a gentleman on an unsuspecting woman is more than an improvised sketch by Sargent. Three related studies were executed at this time, two of which are in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, Sargent's use of the woman's rolling eyes, the flower clenched in the teeth and her resisting arm associates the work to the painting El Jaleo in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts.