John Singer Sargent

Rachel Phipps (the sitter's daughter), 1912
By descent to the present owner (her granddaughter), 1995

David McKibbin, Sargent's Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, 1956, p. 116
Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, New Haven, Connecticut, 1998, p. 141

The sheet is mounted to a board at the edges. The sheet is toned with scattered foxing in the background. There are tacking holes visible at the extreme edges. There is a ½ inch repaired tear at the lower left below the inscription and a 1 x ½ inch water stain at the lower right corner. There is a band of white pigment, likely gouache, across the top edge and across the bottom below the inscription. There is a faint three-inch diagonal scratch in the center left background.
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Mrs. Wilton Phipps, née Jessie Butler Duncan, was the daughter of William Butler Duncan, president of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and Jane Percy Sargent, through whom she was distantly related to the artist. She married William Wilton Phipps, a prosperous London merchant, in 1876. Sargent painted an oil portrait of Mrs. Phipps in 1884 and eighteen years later executed the present work along with a charcoal portrait of her daughter Rachel, to whom this work is dedicated.