Besides painting the alleyways and exteriors of buildings in his first series of Venice, Sargent also portrayed Venetian working-class women in dimly lit interiors. Sargent’s play on perspective of the rooms (which is seen in other Venetian works), aided by his play of light and shadow, creates airy, open spaces, however they also present a side of Venice that would normally not be exposed to outsiders. 
For example, in Sargent’s Venetian Interior (1880-82), he successfully creates a feeling of intimacy and closeness despite the size of the room using a combination of color and perspective. Critic Julian Halsby accounts, “Venetian Interior was considered by Sargent to be the best work of his career, with its virtuoso play of light and subtle and monochromatic tones” (Halsby 115). Sargent’s use of light is quite stunning as it creates an image of depth, and the off-centered perspective of the room also elongates it. Yet despite this attention to the room, the focus of the painting is still the women, and the perspective Sargent uses makes it seem like we are walking into the room, as the female in the foreground takes a look at us. Sargent also utilizes this lens in a second interior painting, A Venetian Interior (1880-82) that depicts a room occupied by a few working-class women beading strings. Again, Sargent places us off-center so that we are placed in the left corner of the room. He uses hanging objects once more to give us a sense of the depth of the room, in this case, hanging pictures, 
though they are not clearly visible because of the room’s darkness. And in both paintings, the walls are not detailed at all, but rather quick brushstrokes of blended grays and whites. Yet, the room still looks accessible to us, despite it being someone’s private “office space.” While critic Arthur Baigneres also made complaints about Sargent’s portrayal of working-class women in interiors, saying that “The women of his Venice, with their messy hair and ragged clothes, are no descendants of Titian’s beauties” (Ratcliffe 73), this proves that Sargent wanted to demonstrate a different side of Venice: something subtly beautiful in contrast to the preconceived notion of Venetian splendor.
Sargent, John Singer. Venetian Interior. 1880-1882. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Sargent, John Singer. A Venetian Interior. 1880-1882. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
