Sunday

This is Lady Agnew of Lochnaw by John Singer Sargent, painted in 1892. It established Sargent’s name as a painter, and it made Lady Agnew’s name in society.

The reason is clear to see: look at her face. We are in the Victorian era, when propriety was prized above all else. But Lady Agnew, née Gertrude Vernon, is taking no prisoners. She is not coy. She is not winsome. She has not composed her expression - or indeed her physical pose, which is very casual for the period - to suggest passive femininity or biddable wifeliness. That’s not a modest, blushing gaze. It's dangerous, because it’s intelligent. You can’t dismiss her.

To me Lady Agnew is so much more than another one of Sargent’s lovely, remarkably lit, slightly interchangeable society ladies. She is like biting into a chocolate expecting it to taste of roses or violets and finding chilli in there instead.

What I especially love is the contrast between the softness of those sugar-almond colours, her dress, the sash around her tiny waist, her pendant, even the chair she’s sitting in, and the look in her eyes. Often with these sorts of portraits, which I am not terribly interested in, all you’re left with an impression of great prettiness - wafty colours, creamy skin, halos of hair. This is something much more complex, because all those components are there, but then you reach her eyes. They meet yours dead on. Who’s looking at who? (I feel like if Lady Agnew knew about the male gaze, she’d tell you where to stick it).

What is she thinking? Are her gaze, her half-smile and that slightly raised eyebrow an invitation? Maybe, but they could just as well mean, ‘I wish you’d paint slightly faster so that I could go and do something more interesting. I’ve been sitting here for hours and it’s boring’.

I get the feeling that, in whatever way, artist and sitter know each other. He sees all of her, and she sees him too. That is why the portrait is truly great. The candour and truthfulness of her expression were so unusual in Victorian times that the painting stopped people in their tracks. It stops me in mine, too.

When she was old, Lady Agnew seems to have hit hard times and tried to sell the portrait to the Frick collection in New York, only to have the trustees turn it down (were they blind??). The painting now lives in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh and its curators made this short video about it.

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