Rosina Ferrara
Encyclopedia
Rosina Ferrara was an Italian girl from the island of Capri
, who became the favorite muse
of American expatriate
artist John Singer Sargent
.
She was born in Anacapri
, Capri
, in 1861. Visitors to her native island, some of whom were famous artists, were captivated by her exotic beauty. She posed for a variety of 19th century artists, including Frank Hyde
, Charles Sprague Pearce
, and George Randolph Barse
(whom she later married), and is immortalized in paintings and sketches by them and other artists, which now hang in museums, art galleries, and private collections.
Ferrara was featured in the 2003 art exhibit "Sargent's Women" at New York City
's Adelson Galleries, as well as in the eponymous book published that year.
Ferrara was described by various artists as an "Arab/Greek type," the type seen in classical art, such as that of Ancient Greece
. Greek colonists settled in Capri in ancient times and left their mark in their descendants.
In the 19th century, artists and writers from all over Europe and America traveled to Capri to see the beauty of the island and of its inhabitants; Caprese
and Neapolitan-area
women are renowned for their beauty. Their exotic looks fascinated writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine
, whose novel Graziella was based upon his experience there. According to one person's account, Sargent went to Capri in search of subject painting:
Ferrara was first discovered by French artist Edward Vaux, and became his model. Then came British artist Frank Hyde
, who while visiting Capri in search of inspiration, was intrigued by her exotic beauty. He painted a classical picture of Capri life which depicts her reclining sensually on a couch, clad in a seductive classical
toga
while another young girl performs on a flute
. The painting is called Rosina.
John Singer Sargent came to the island in 1878. He sought fresh ideas and new faces to strike his fancy. Taken by the beauty of its inhabitants, he was especially smitten by the handsome 17-year-old Rosina -- so smitten that he painted her at least twelve times during his year's stay on the island town of Anacapri. She was featured in Dans Les Olivier, Head of an Anacapri Girl, View of Capri, Rosina, among the many paintings Sargent painted while he was living in Capri in 1878. When Charles Sprague Pearce showed his cabinet picture of Rosina for the Salon in 1882, Mr. Pearce described her as "the tawney skinned, panther eyed, elf-like Rosina, wildest and lithest of all the savage creatures on the savage isle of Capri." The Neapolitan and Capri fisher girls, almost always working class, had long been in the French imagination during the 19th century, especially since 1849 when Alphonse de Lamartine
wrote his then famous, now forgotten romantic novel Graziella. The book featured a sophisticated Frenchman who fell in love with the fisher girl Graziella. After a brief romance and courtship, he abandoned her and returned to his native France, presumably to marry a girl of his background back home.
This romance, although bittersweet and heartbreaking, reflected the life of the author who wrote the novel: de Lamartine once fell in love with a working class
Neapolitan girl, whom he left when he returned to France. It also reflected the fate of many poor or working class Capri and Neapolitan girls. One man wrote this concerning Rosina:
. It is unclear which member of the royal houses of Europe visited Capri during that time period. It could have been one of the members of the House of Bourbon
, which ruled Naples
during most of the 18th century.
Her late sister's daughter, Maria Primavera, was married to Pompeius Michael Bernardo. Maria Primavera was adopted by Ferrara and George Randolph Barse shortly after her sister's death.
She became a mistress
to the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens
sometime in the mid-1880s, and was a friend to American expatriate
artist Charles C. Coleman
, who specialized in painting Mediterranean landscapes similar to those painted by Sargent and other American, British, and French painters.
In 1891 in Rome
, she married American painter George Randolph Barse
of Detroit and moved to the United States shortly after the marriage. They lived in Katonah, Westchester County, New York
. Their marriage was a happy one. Rosina Ferrara died in New York City
in 1934 from pneumonia. (She had been hospitalized while visiting Maria Bernardo and family in New York City.) Four years after her death, Barse committed suicide in Westchester County, N.Y.
Ferrara has left the art world her legacy in the form of paintings and sketches as well as a renewed interest about Capri and John Singer Sargent, which is reflected in the publication of numerous works about Sargent, as well as through the many exhibitions in art museums and galleries around the world. She was a prominent subject in the books and exhibitions Sargent's Women, Sargent and Italy and Great Expectations between 2003 and 2005.
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
, who became the favorite muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
of American expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
artist John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
.
Anacapri
Anacapri is a comune on the island of Capri, in the province of Naples, Italy. The Ancient Greek prefix ana means "up" or "above", signifying that Anacapri is located at a higher elevation on the island than Capri . Administratively, it has a separate status from the city of Capri...
, Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
, in 1861. Visitors to her native island, some of whom were famous artists, were captivated by her exotic beauty. She posed for a variety of 19th century artists, including Frank Hyde
Frank Hyde (painter)
Frank Hyde was a British portrait and figure painter known for his Capri portraits of local model Rosina Ferrara and his friendship with John Singer Sargent....
, Charles Sprague Pearce
Charles Sprague Pearce
-Biography:Pearce was born at Boston, Massachusetts. In 1873 he became a pupil of Léon Bonnat in Paris, and after 1885 he lived in Paris and at Auvers-sur-Oise. He painted Egyptian and Algerian scenes, French peasants, and portraits, and also decorative work, notably for the Thomas Jefferson...
, and George Randolph Barse
George Randolph Barse
George Randolph Barse Jr. was an American artist and illustrator. Born in Detroit, Barse attended public schools in Kansas City and went to Paris in 1878, where he spent five years training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel, and at the Académie Julien under Jules...
(whom she later married), and is immortalized in paintings and sketches by them and other artists, which now hang in museums, art galleries, and private collections.
Ferrara was featured in the 2003 art exhibit "Sargent's Women" at New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Adelson Galleries, as well as in the eponymous book published that year.
Image in art and culture
Art in Ancient Greece
The arts of ancient Greece have exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries all over the world, particularly in the areas of sculpture and architecture. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models...
. Greek colonists settled in Capri in ancient times and left their mark in their descendants.
In the 19th century, artists and writers from all over Europe and America traveled to Capri to see the beauty of the island and of its inhabitants; Caprese
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
and Neapolitan-area
Province of Naples
The Province of Naples is a province in the Campania region of Italy. Its capital city is Naples, within the province there are 92 Comuni of the Province of Naples.-Demographics:...
women are renowned for their beauty. Their exotic looks fascinated writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...
, whose novel Graziella was based upon his experience there. According to one person's account, Sargent went to Capri in search of subject painting:
The Island of Capri was a logical place to look. Capri was a place of imagination, beautiful women and interesting architecture. Artists had been drawn to there for years.
Ferrara was first discovered by French artist Edward Vaux, and became his model. Then came British artist Frank Hyde
Frank Hyde (painter)
Frank Hyde was a British portrait and figure painter known for his Capri portraits of local model Rosina Ferrara and his friendship with John Singer Sargent....
, who while visiting Capri in search of inspiration, was intrigued by her exotic beauty. He painted a classical picture of Capri life which depicts her reclining sensually on a couch, clad in a seductive classical
Clothing in ancient Rome
Clothing in ancient Rome generally consisted of the toga, the tunic, the stola, brooches for these, and breeches.-Fibers:The Romans used several different types of [fiber]s. Wool was likely used most often, as it was obtained easily and was rather easy to prepare...
toga
Toga
The toga, a distinctive garment of Ancient Rome, was a cloth of perhaps 20 ft in length which was wrapped around the body and was generally worn over a tunic. The toga was made of wool, and the tunic under it often was made of linen. After the 2nd century BC, the toga was a garment worn...
while another young girl performs on a flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
. The painting is called Rosina.
John Singer Sargent came to the island in 1878. He sought fresh ideas and new faces to strike his fancy. Taken by the beauty of its inhabitants, he was especially smitten by the handsome 17-year-old Rosina -- so smitten that he painted her at least twelve times during his year's stay on the island town of Anacapri. She was featured in Dans Les Olivier, Head of an Anacapri Girl, View of Capri, Rosina, among the many paintings Sargent painted while he was living in Capri in 1878. When Charles Sprague Pearce showed his cabinet picture of Rosina for the Salon in 1882, Mr. Pearce described her as "the tawney skinned, panther eyed, elf-like Rosina, wildest and lithest of all the savage creatures on the savage isle of Capri." The Neapolitan and Capri fisher girls, almost always working class, had long been in the French imagination during the 19th century, especially since 1849 when Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...
wrote his then famous, now forgotten romantic novel Graziella. The book featured a sophisticated Frenchman who fell in love with the fisher girl Graziella. After a brief romance and courtship, he abandoned her and returned to his native France, presumably to marry a girl of his background back home.
This romance, although bittersweet and heartbreaking, reflected the life of the author who wrote the novel: de Lamartine once fell in love with a working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
Neapolitan girl, whom he left when he returned to France. It also reflected the fate of many poor or working class Capri and Neapolitan girls. One man wrote this concerning Rosina:
Of all the Capri women, Rosina Ferrara (1862-1938), was the most beautiful. In 1886, Adrian Stokes (an English artist) recalled "It used to be easy for artists to find models, but now the grown-up girls are rather shy of strangers, and the priests think it is dangerous for them to pose. For all of that, there are some regular models to be had. Rosina is considered the first on the island, and certainly is a remarkably handsome young woman. She sits perfectly as a model of London or Paris.
Private life
Ferrara gave birth to Maria Carlotta in 1883. The father of her child is not known, but some say that she was a daughter of a male member of a royal familyRoyal family
A royal family is the extended family of a king or queen regnant. The term imperial family appropriately describes the extended family of an emperor or empress, while the terms "ducal family", "grand ducal family" or "princely family" are more appropriate to describe the relatives of a reigning...
. It is unclear which member of the royal houses of Europe visited Capri during that time period. It could have been one of the members of the House of Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
, which ruled Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
during most of the 18th century.
Her late sister's daughter, Maria Primavera, was married to Pompeius Michael Bernardo. Maria Primavera was adopted by Ferrara and George Randolph Barse shortly after her sister's death.
She became a mistress
Mistress (lover)
A mistress is a long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner; the term is used especially when her partner is married. The relationship generally is stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple does not live together openly. Also the relationship is usually,...
to the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens
Alfred Stevens (painter)
Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens was a Belgian painter.Alfred Stevens was born in Brussels. He came from a family involved with the visual arts: his older brother Joseph and his son Léopold were painters, while another brother Arthur was an art dealer and critic...
sometime in the mid-1880s, and was a friend to American expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
artist Charles C. Coleman
Charles Caryl Coleman
Charles Caryl Coleman was an American-born Italian painter.Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, Coleman studied art under William Holbrook Beard "and an itinerant painter, Andrew Andrews whose real name was Isaacs." Between 1859 to 1862, Coleman studied in Paris under Thomas Couture, returning...
, who specialized in painting Mediterranean landscapes similar to those painted by Sargent and other American, British, and French painters.
In 1891 in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, she married American painter George Randolph Barse
George Randolph Barse
George Randolph Barse Jr. was an American artist and illustrator. Born in Detroit, Barse attended public schools in Kansas City and went to Paris in 1878, where he spent five years training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel, and at the Académie Julien under Jules...
of Detroit and moved to the United States shortly after the marriage. They lived in Katonah, Westchester County, New York
Westchester County, New York
Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...
. Their marriage was a happy one. Rosina Ferrara died in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1934 from pneumonia. (She had been hospitalized while visiting Maria Bernardo and family in New York City.) Four years after her death, Barse committed suicide in Westchester County, N.Y.
The Legacy of Rosina Ferrara
List of paintings featuring Rosina Ferrara
- Head of Anacapri Girl by John Singer Sargent (1878)
- Dans Les Olivieres by John Singer Sargent (1878) - Private collection
- A Capriote by John Singer Sargent (1878) - Museum of Fine Arts, BostonMuseum of Fine Arts, BostonThe Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
, USA - View of Capri by John Singer Sargent (1878) - Yale University Art Gallery, New HavenNew Haven, ConnecticutNew Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, USA - Capri by John Singer Sargent (1878) - The Warner Collection of the Gulf States Paper Corporation, TuscaloosaTuscaloosa, AlabamaTuscaloosa is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west central Alabama . Located on the Black Warrior River, it is the fifth-largest city in Alabama, with a population of 90,468 in 2010...
, USA) - Rosina-Capri by John Singer Sargent (1878) - Private collection
- Rosina by John Singer Sargent (1878) - Private collection
- Stringing Onions by John Singer Sargent (1878) - Private collection
- Rosina Ferrara - The Capri by John Singer Sargent (1878) - Private collection
- Study of Rosina Ferrara by John Singer Sargent (c. 1878) - Private collection
- Rosina Ferrara by Frank Hyde (1880) - Private collection
- Capri Girl by Jean Benner (1880s)
- Rosina by George Randolph Barse (1900) - Speed Art MuseumSpeed Art MuseumThe Speed Art Museum, originally known as the J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, now colloquially referred to as the Speed by locals, is the oldest, largest, and foremost museum of art in Kentucky...
, LouisvilleLouisville, KentuckyLouisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
, USA
External links
- Rosina Ferrara- Belle of Capri
- Rosina
- John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery
- Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery: Capri Trip
- Frank Hyde Virtual Gallery
- "Sargent's Women" Essay
- George Glazer Gallery- George Barse
- George Randolph Barse
- Adelson Galleries: Sargent's Women
- Dans Les Olivier
- View of Capri
- Encyclopedia- Alphonse de Lamartine
- Stevens(1823-1906)from Artcyclopedia.com
- On Becoming Italian: A Blog
