Mrs Charles RussellFramed Poster

Mrs Charles Russell appears in a portrait by John Singer Sargent, and the paint carries the likeness. Look at the face and the shoulders: the strokes go down fast, some wet into others, edges left rough where the brush lifted. Nothing is tidied.

You get the framed poster with a hanger already on the back. The frame comes in white, wood, dark wood or black. A dark wood edge would hold the darker passages of the portrait in place, so the sitter stays the first thing you see.

In a study, over the desk, the loose strokes read as movement rather than detail. You notice how quickly the hand worked and where it stopped.