John Singer Sargent Dr. Pozzi at Home, 1881 Oil on canvas The Armand Hammer Collection, Gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles |
For more than a century it was kept concealed from the public gaze, initially standing on an easel in the subject's home in the Place Vendome in central Paris, later hung on the walls of an apartment on the Avenue d'Iena. Then in 1990 it burst upon an admiring public in the gallery of the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles: Dr. Pozzi Chez Lui - Dr Pozzi at Home. John Singer Sargent's engaging portrait of 1881 shows a dark and handsome man in his mid-thirties, attired with casual elegance in a scarlet dressing-gown and frilled nightshirt, against a background of crimson drapes. One hand rests on the gown's tasseled cord, the other is positioned against his chest. Who, the public wanted to know, was this Doctor Pozzi?
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