American Art Collaborative

John Singer Sargent painted this study of a Spanish dancer as he was beginning work on a monumental painting of a flamenco performance, titled El Jaleo. He had witnessed flamenco firsthand in the cafes of Seville when he traveled to Spain in 1879, and after returning to Paris he spent three years exploring the subject. In his study of this dancer, her dramatic gesture and swirling, fringed shawl convey her movement. Sargent sketched the basic forms in pencil before deftly applying watercolor washes to give substance to the dancer's body and shawl, and to suggest the murky background. Sargent painted this subject during the Golden Age of Flamenco (1860-1915), when this improvisational form of gypsy dancing became a popular theatrical spectacle. Flamenco is generally performed by a solo dancer to the accompaniment of a guitarist, singer, and palmero, who provides percussion with handclaps. Though flamenco is usually associated today with a loud, rhythmic stamping of the heels, when Sargent saw flamenco performed in the late 19th century, it would have been only the male dancers who stamped their feet. Female dancers, such as the one shown here, only brushed their feet across the dance floor; their performance relied instead on the movements of their upper body and emphatic gestures to create drama.