The Magazine Antiques, November 1st, 2004
John Singer Sargent had a capacity to idealize his portrait subjects that few painters of his era could rival. He could also tantalize and mystify, as he did in Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife (Pl. I). Why did Sargent paint the celebrated author in this strange way? It is among the most daring and unorthodox portraits he ever created. His attraction to the charismatic writer, whom he described as "the most intense creature that I had ever met," (1) was such that he was prepared to risk public censure to commemorate Stevenson's eccentric personality and way of life.
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