# Mannikin in the Snow

Sargent painted this canvas in the company of his fellow expatriate
Edwin Austin Abbey in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where the two artists
had rented a studio for their work on mural commissions. As a diversion
one day, they arranged a mannequin in the snow and painted oil sketches
of it from their studio window. The results reveal their dissimilar
approaches to art. The critic Royal Cortissoz recalled that Abbey
conjured from the mannequin a lifelike medieval troubadour wearing a
cloak and a feathered hat (in a painting that has not been located);
Sargent, instead, recorded the lifeless dummy that stood before his
eyes.

John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, considered the
"leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of
Edwardian-era luxury. From the beginning, Sargent's work is
characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his
ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration
as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned
works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his
informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with
Impressionism.