Head of a Capri Girl

American painter John Singer Sargent painted this portrait in 1878 during a working holiday on the Italian island of Capri. The subject is Rosina Ferrara, a seventeen-year-old local woman who briefly became his most frequent model that summer.

Sargent had just finished his studies with Carolus-Duran in Paris and was already finding success at the Salon. He traveled to Capri's village of Anacapri, popular with artists at the time, where he met Ferrara through his friend Frank Hyde. Her dark beauty captivated him. Sargent's biographer Evan Charteris described her as "a magnificent type, about seventeen years of age, her complexion a rich nut-brown, with a mass of blue-black hair."

The 22-year-old Sargent produced numerous sketches and finished paintings of Rosina that summer. Artists including Charles Sprague Pearce and George Randolph Barse also painted her. This particular portrait, an oil on canvas measuring 43.2 x 30.5 cm, is considered among the finest of his quick portraits from early in his career. A closely related version at the Denver Art Museum bears a dedication "To my friend Hyde" and the date 1878.