Street in Venice

A young woman comes down a narrow Venetian alley, wrapped in a fringed black shawl over a long pale skirt, while two men in dark coats and hats pause by the wall. One of them has clearly turned to watch her go by. Whether she notices, or chooses not to, is left entirely open, and that small uncertainty is what the whole picture hangs on. John Singer Sargent painted it around 1882, when he was only in his mid twenties and spending long stretches in Venice. Instead of painting the Grand Canal or St Mark's Square like nearly every other visiting artist, he went looking for back streets and the people who actually lived in them.

The colors are deliberately drab: chalky plaster walls, shuttered windows in faded green, a pavement that seems to soak up all the light. Sargent worked the paint on thinly and quickly, and in places you can see the wood panel showing through beneath. He had been studying Velázquez in Madrid shortly before this, and that shows in the confident, economical brushwork and the willingness to let large areas stay dim and unfussy so a single figure reads clearly. Far down the alley, almost lost in shadow, a few more people sit outside a doorway, a reminder that this street kept going about its business whether or not anyone was painting it.