Charles Edward Perugini

With Pyms Gallery, London;

With The Fine Art Society, London, by May 1984;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 26 November 1985, lot 41;

Where purchased by the present owners.

Carlo (later anglicised to Charles) Perugini was born in Naples in 1839 and spent part of his childhood in England but in the mid-1850s he was living in Rome, probably working as an artist’s-model. It was whilst he was in Rome that the fifteen-year-old was befriended by Frederic Leighton, who was painting his early masterpieces Cimabue’s Madonna and The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets. In the later 1850s Perugini trained under Ary Scheffer, and may well have had further contact with Leighton at a time when they were both living in Paris. When Leighton returned to London Perugini followed him and by 1863 he was settled in England and began showing at the Royal Academy. A series of payments from Leighton for services as a studio assistant, or perhaps because Leighton provided Perugini with financial support at a time when the younger artist was struggling to sell works, are recorded over a period from 1870 to 1879. In 1874 Perugini married Kate, the youngest daughter of the novelist Charles Dickens – she also became a well-respected artist.

Perugini's style of painting, which is softly naturalistic and fluently handled, and in which is found a particular feeling for the textures of skin and cloth, owes much to the example of Leighton. Like his mentor, Perugini succeeds in making his compositions harmonious and elegantly unified, and introduces a living quality to what he paints by their freshness of texture and glowing animation. In the present work Perugini shows himself adept at the representation of varying textures of fabric, marbles and jewels. The classical subject is also reminiscent of Leighton and the statuesque model is of a similar physical type that Leighton painted – it is possible that it depicts one of the beautiful Pullen sisters who posed for Leighton and other artists. Ada Alice Pullen is the best-known of these models, becoming the muse of his later career. She also became well-known as an actress, using the name Dorothy Dene and by 1886 she had become one of the most photographed woman in Britain.