Portrait of Lisa Colt Curtis (1898): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Lisa Colt Curtis (1898) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Singer Sargent (American, born Italy, 1856–1925).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One of the most sought-after painters of his era, Sargent achieved considerable critical and financial success portraying cosmopolitan members of high society on both sides of the Atlantic. Here, the artist depicts an acquaintance—a relative of the Colt firearms family—who had recently married his distant cousin Ralph. In her portrait, Curtis wears an elegant satin dress and poses as if she were welcoming guests into her palatial Venetian home. The painting apparently was a wedding gift to the couple by the artist; its inscription at the top right reads, "To Ralph and Mrs. Ralph, John S. Sargent 1898."

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Lisa Colt Curtis
• Date: 1898
• Creator attribution: John Singer Sargent (American, born Italy, 1856–1925)
• Culture: United States
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 249 x 134 x 9.5 cm (98 1/16 x 52 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 219.3 x 104.8 cm (86 5/16 x 41 1/4 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1998.168

A detail from the museum

Although known as John Singer Sargent today, he almost never used his middle name during his lifetime.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Berendt, John. The City of Falling Angels. 2005.
• Ormond, Richard. John Singer Sargent: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
• McKibben, David, Sargent’s Boston, with an Essay & a Biographical Summary & A Complete Check List of Sargent’s Portraits. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1956.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.