John Singer Sargent 1856 - 1925

Richard Saltonstall Greenough (the sitter's father)
Daniel Sargent Curtis, Palazzo Barbaro, Venice, Italy
Ralph Wormeley Curtis(his son), Paris, France and Palazzo Barbaro, Venice, Italy
Private Collection, Paris, France
Wildenstein and Co., New York, by 1973
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1974

Evan Charteris, John Sargent, London, 1927, p. 258
Charles Merrill Mount, John Singer Sargent: A Biography, New York, no. 8014, 1955 ed., p. 428; 1957 ed., p. 337; 1969 ed., p. 440
David McKibbin, Sargent's Boston, with an Essay and a Biographical Summary, Boston, Massachusetts, 1956, p. 99
Charles Merrill Mount, "New Discoveries Illumine Sargent's Paris Career," Art Quarterly, 1957, p. 312, illustrated fig. 5
Richard Ormond, John Singer Sargent: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, London, 1970, p. 21
Richard Ormand and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Complete Paintings, vol. 1, New Haven, Connecticut, 1998, pp. 90-91, 245, illustrated in color p. 90, no. 85

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According to Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray: "(Richard) Gordon Greenough (1850-80), himself an artist, was born in Rome, the son of the sculptor Richard Saltonstall Greenough, and Sarah Dana Loring.  He studied with his father, and at the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Paris, where he matriculated twice in 1878 and once in 1880, with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre in Paris and at the Academy in Brussels.  He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877, 1878, and 1879.

"Greenough was related to the Curtis family and was staying with them at the Palazzo Barbaro, their house in Venice, in the summer of 1880.  Sargent was a visitor in the late summer of 1880, coming to join his family and seeing much of his friend Ralph Curtis.  He started [sketching] Greenough, and family tradition records that Greenough, who was suffering from a terminal illness, urged Sargent to finish the picture quickly if he wanted to finish it at all.  Greenough died within days of its completion."

"A related drawing, dated 1880, is at Amherst College, Massachusetts.  The face in the drawing has little of the haunted quality of the oil sketch, and the head is not drawn with the same sculptural effect."