Lot 13: f - CHARLES EDWARD PERUGINI 1839-1918

A BACKWARD GLANCE

43.5 by 33.5 cm., 17 by 13 ¼ in.

signed with monogram l.l.

oil on canvas

NOTE

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.

In the present portrait of an unidentified woman, Perugini placed his model against a background of vine leaves. He takes delight in showing the upper part of her back and the nape of her neck in bright light, but then treating her neck and the side of her face in shadow. Light then suffuses the distant side of the girl's face, so that the profile of her nose and right cheek tells strongly.

The model wears a dress of black velvet, edged with white and an embroidered pattern, and with rich green sleeves of a bunched fabric. This style lends an antiquarian feel to the portrait. It is possible that the painting was intended as the representation of an historical character, or as an abstract female personification. The model's lustrous hair, dark and deeply set eyes, and pale complexion, may indicate that she herself was of Latin extraction.

CSN