Lady Agnew of Lochnaw is famous because John Singer Sargent painted her in 1892 and the Royal Academy showed the portrait in 1893, among the first works a visitor saw on entering. Critics called it a triumph, and the National Galleries of Scotland records an instant success.
The sitter was Gertrude Vernon, wife of Sir Andrew Agnew, 9th Baronet of Lochnaw. Sargent later recalled painting the portrait in just six sittings. She wears a white dress with a lilac sash, sits in a Louis XVI chair against a Chinese silk hanging, and looks straight out of the canvas.
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The fame was real. So was the bill. The National Galleries of Scotland records what followed: the high costs of her hospitality eventually forced Gertrude Agnew to sell family pictures, and this portrait was one of them.
In 1922 she decided to part with her own face to pay her debts. A buyer in New York said no, because the people running that collection had not yet decided what it would become.
Sargent had needed only six sittings in 1892 to paint the picture. Selling it took until 1925.
What did the critics write in 1893?
They reached for the biggest words they had. The Times called the portrait "not only a triumph of technique but the finest example of portraiture" and a "masterpiece."
The Pall Mall Gazette reviewed it the same day, 29 April 1893. Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson wrote that the picture "is played on the full orchestra of high art" and that "every audacity of touch becomes beauty and truth." The Art-Journal said it "tops everything in the Academy," and the Illustrated London News called it "without doubt one of the most remarkable pictures of the year."
The reviewers were writing about paint. What they were looking at was a woman who had been ill.
What You'll Discover
What the flu left on the canvas.
What it did for Sargent.
Who refused it before Edinburgh.