John Sargent, Frank Hyde and Rosina Ferrara

There were living on the island, besides the enamoured German, several French and three English artists, one of whom — Mr. Frank Hyde — had a studio in the old monastery of Santa Teresa.

Mr. Hyde had never met Sargent and had never seen his work, but hearing that an American artist had arrived and was staying at one of the inns, he called and found him with no place to work in, but perfectly content and revelling in the beauty of the island.Mr. Hyde invited him to come and work at the monastery.

There he provided him with a famous model called Rosina, "an Ana Capri girl, a magnificent type, about seventeen years of age, her complexion a rich nut-brown, with a mass of blue-black hair, very beautiful, and of an Arab type."

Sargent made many studies from her, one of which, the property of Miss Sargent, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1926, and will be found reproduced at the top of this page.

During the remainder of his stay he resided at the Marina Hotel; here he imported a breath of the Latin Quarter, entertaining the artists on the island and organizing a fete in which the tarantella was danced on the flat roof of his hotel, to an orchestra of tambourines and guitars.

But no entertainment in the Latin Quarter could compete with the figures of the dancers silhouetted against the violet darkness of the night under the broad illumination of the moon, the surrounding silence, the faint winds from the sea, and a supper when the stars are giving place before the first orange splash of day. Bonnet, Sain, Doucet, Chatrau, Frank Hyde and others were the guests of Sargent on that occasion.

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