Sargent began to receive commissions as a result of the success of his portrait of Carolus-Duran presented at the Paris Salon of 1879. The first of the Paris elite to patronize him was the playwright Edouard Pailleron. So pleased was Pailleron with his portrait that he asked Sargent to paint his wife at the country estate of Mme Pailleron’s father, Edmund Buloz, editor of the influential La Revue des deux mondes. In August 1879 Sargent spent six enjoyable weeks at Ronjoux, the Buloz summer home in Savoy, in southeastern France. Before leaving, he painted a portrait of his hostess, Mme Buloz, as a gift for her. Mme Buloz (née Christine Blaze de Bury) later professed to her sister that she did not care for the portrait, "I do not find it flattering enough; it is as I will look in ten years time if God allows me to live that long!"
Despite Mme Buloz’s objections, the portrait Sargent created clearly demonstrates his ability to capture a sitter’s character. He presented Mme Buloz, an elderly woman, in a direct, frontal pose. As she quietly looks out at the viewer, her forthright but gentle gaze suggests a perceptive personality. Sargent’s brushwork is spontaneous; with a deft hand and few strokes he sensitively modeled her expressive face. In such portrait sketches Sargent often conveyed greater vitality and freshness than in his more finished, commissioned works. Although Mme Buloz wears black and emerges from a shadowy interior, the portrait is rich, demonstrating that at this early stage Sargent was already a master of the restricted palette that his teacher had extolled.
