A Javanese Dancing Girl

One of the centerpieces of the Exposition Universelle, held in Paris in 1889, was the Kampong javanais, a re-creation of a Javanese village. The highlight of the village was a performance of traditional Javanese dance accompanied by gamelan music. The young dancers, who had been brought over with a group of Javanese craftsmen and musicians to represent the native traditions of Dutch Indochina, were treated as celebrities and spectacle. Sargent visited the exposition and was fascinated by the dancers, their costumes, and the expressive symbolism of their dance. He created a series of studies of the individual dancers, perhaps with the idea to create a larger composition. In this unfinished painting, Sargent experiments with the position of a dancer’s left arm and hand and suggests the movement of her feet.