Lot 24: Charles Edward Perugini 1839-1918 , Portrait of a Lady oil on canvas

signed with monogram l.r. oil on canvas

109 by 71 cm., 43 by 28 1/2 in.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE NEW YORK COLLECTION
This elegant three-quarter length portrait shows an unidentified woman dressed fashionably and in a style that suggests a date for the painting of sometime in the 1880s. Carlo (later anglicised to Charles) Perugini was born in Naples in 1839. He met Leighton in Rome in the early 1850s, and may have served as a model for the painting Cimabue's Madonna (Royal Collection), upon which Leighton was then working. In the later 1850s Perugini trained under Ary Scheffer in Paris. He then transferred to London in 1863, commencing as an exhibitor at the Royal Academy that same year. 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.

Here Perugini shows himself adept at the representation of landscape, with a lovely distant view of sea and coast forming the background to the portrait. The artist would certainly have known Leighton's own landscape sketches, with their remarkable feeling for the quality and direction of light. Here, the impressionistic freshness of the natural setting makes a delightful contrast to the elegance and sophistication of the model, as evidenced by the elaborate style of her dress and the composure of her demeanour.

Perugini's portraits of young women are often supposed to represent his wife Kate, the daughter of Charles Dickens. She had previously been married to the artist Charles Allston Collins but had been widowed in 1873. Lucinda Hawksley, herself descended from Dickens and his biographer, has expressed the opinion that this is not a portrait of Kate, on the grounds that the style of dress indicates that the painting was made in the 1880s at which time Kate was in her forties, while the portrait appears to be of a younger woman.

It may be suggested that the work was commissioned as a marriage portrait. The model wears a rosebud at her bosom, which may be seen as a symbol of her youthful and unfolding beauty, while her wedding-ring is visible on her left hand.
CSN