Image of the Day Smoke of Ambergris

Sargent's At the Clark. Funny the website describes it:

Fumée d'Ambre Gris was painted after Sargent’s trip to North Africa in the winter of 1879-80. The painting depicts an exotically dressed woman inhaling the smoke of ambergris — a resinous substance found in tropical seawater. Ambergris was believed to ward off evil spirits and also served as an aphrodisiac

Actually she is perfuming her clothing with the smoke and in 'real life' would probably step on top of it and let the smoke flow up her robes...oh and ambergris is found in seawater but they forgot to mention it's essentially regurgitated from the stomach of a sperm whale. ...anyway its an amazing painting, and the most interesting parts are the what Sargent does with the blues and shadows on the white wall.

Update he was about 23-24 years old when he painted this...in many ways I think sargent's best work was in his twenties...and then his later years doing watercolours - it might have been he got too caught up doing portraits which were lucrative - before and after the portraiture period he was able to do what he wanted - more exotic subjects like this, or watercolor studies.