Jun 04, 2015 - Sale 2386

Sale 2386 - Lot 17

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
FRANCIS DAVIS MILLET
A Roman Patrician.

Oil on canvas, 1882. 300x165 mm; 11 7/8x6 1/2 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed in oil, lower right recto.

Millet (1848-1912) worked closely with John La Farge and John Singer Sargent, and was a good friend of Mark Twain, who was the best man at his wedding. Millet died in the sinking of the Titanic.

According to Dr. Gina M. D'Angelo, this work, "Is an oil sketch of Millet's life-size Portrait of Lawrence Barrett as Cassius, 1882 (currently unlocated). According to the American essayist and critic Laurence Hutton, this is "the original study [for the portrait], a small sketch in oils given to me by the painter many years ago" (see Hutton, Talks in a Library, New York, 1905, page 98).