Dr Pozzi at Home face swap

Where this one comes from

Sargent was twenty-five when he painted Samuel-Jean Pozzi in 1881, three years before the Madame X scandal drove him out of Paris. Pozzi was a surgeon who did more than almost anyone to drag gynaecology into modern antiseptic practice, and he was also a famous seducer with a nickname to match. He was shot dead by a former patient in 1918. The painting is at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

What is in the picture

The red is the whole picture: a full-length dressing gown against a red curtain, which should collapse into one flat stain and instead separates into a dozen reds because Sargent could do that. The hands are the second subject — long, arranged, one at the collar and one at the belt, a surgeon’s hands deliberately displayed. The face above it is handsome and knows it. Nothing here is accidental, including the domestic setting that lets a man be painted in his nightwear and call it formal.

When people use it

For being overdressed on purpose. It is the picture for anybody who has put visible effort into an outfit and wants that noticed, and it is very good over an entrance of any kind.

How your face lands in it

The head is upright, front-lit and moderately sized in a tall picture, so bring a clear photograph rather than a dim one. The dark beard and hair frame the face closely and remain. What carries the result is the red, which surrounds your face on every side and does most of the work of making a photograph look like a painting.

Dr Pozzi at Home — John Singer Sargent, 1881. John Singer Sargent died in 1925, so the painting is in the public domain across the European Union and the United Kingdom, and a work of 1881 is public domain in the United States. Source

Also in: Paintings · Victorian portraits