A Balustrade WA_1944_31-a Celebrated in his lifetime as

Celebrated in his lifetime as a painter of perspective and of animals and landscape

Piero painted a poetic interpretation of the classical source

Purgatorio XXVII

on a visit to Skye in the autumn of 1855

A Balustrade WA_1944_31-a Celebrated in his lifetime asThe balustrade leads to the front door of the church of SS Domenico e Sisto in Rome. During his visits to Italy, Sargent sought relief from painting portraits and turned to landscapes, both in oils and watercolours. The artist described this as 'a study of a magnificent curved staircase and balustrade, leading to a grand faade that would reduce a millionaire to a worm'. He later used the study for the background to a portrait of Charles E. Eliot,