Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

John Singer Sargent · 1892

A young woman leans back in an old French armchair and looks straight at you with a half-smile that seems to keep a secret. Sargent painted Gertrude Agnew in 1892, and the portrait made both of them famous.

The story behind the painting

Gertrude Vernon was born in 1864 and in 1889 married Sir Andrew Noel Agnew, 9th Baronet of Lochnaw Castle in Wigtownshire. In 1892 her husband commissioned the American portraitist John Singer Sargent to paint her, and the picture was finished the same year. Its success gave her new fame and prestige. According to the art historians Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, she was recovering from influenza while she sat for it, which may explain the languid ease of her pose. Lady Agnew died in London in April 1932 after a long illness.

What to look for

She sits in an 18th-century French bergère, its curved back holding her like a frame; Richard Ormond calls the effect a distinctive, languid elegance. Sargent shows her at three-quarter length in a white gown with a mauve silk sash at the waist, against a wall hung with blue Chinese silk. Look at her eyes and mouth: Ormond and Kilmurray describe a gaze that is quietly challenging and a quizzical half-smile that is both withheld and inviting. The canvas, 127 by 101 cm, still sits in an antique French rococo frame.

Meaning and intent

The portrait feels like the start of an intimate conversation with whoever stands before it. When it was shown at the Royal Academy in London in 1893, an unsigned review in The Times called it a triumph of technique and the finest example of portraiture seen there for a long time, saying Sargent had dropped his mannerisms and simply made a beautiful picture of a charming subject at rest. The writer also called it a masterpiece. The success may have helped Sargent become an associate of the Academy the following January.

Legacy

The painting travelled to Boston's Copley Hall in 1899 and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1924. There is speculation that the family later faced money troubles: an offer to the Frick Collection in 1922 was refused by Helen Clay Frick. The Scottish National Gallery says the cost of keeping up a stylish celebrity life led Lady Agnew to sell her own portrait. She chose the gallery over a buyer in New York, and it was acquired in 1925 with help from the Cowan Smith Bequest Fund. At her request it was retitled Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. It still hangs in Edinburgh.