Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White (Mrs. Henry White)

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Artist: John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925)
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: overall: 225.1 × 143.8 cm (88 5/8 × 56 5/8 in.); framed: 249.24 × 167.96 × 12.07 cm (98 1/8 × 66 1/8 × 4 3/4 in.)
Museum: National Gallery of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

A woman with pale, peachy skin and dark brown hair, wearing a long sleeved, floor-length white satin dress, stands facing and looking out at us in a room hung with shimmering, ivory-white drapery in this vertical portrait. The woman’s body is angled slightly to our left and her hair is piled on top of her head. She has dark eyes, a straight nose, and her rose-red lips are closed. She wears pearl earrings, a string of pearls at her throat, and a brooch with two large pearls at her chest.

The deep V-neck of her dress is edged with layers of sheer fabric that drapes over her shoulders. Some areas of the dress are loosely painted but gives the impression of lace edging along the collar and bows down the front of the bodice and at the elbows of the half sleeves. The train of the dress bunches around her feet behind her to our left and is either gathered at her left hip, on our right, or her dress has a voluminous bustle there.

She holds a partially open fan in her right hand, on our left, and black opera glasses in the other hand, nestled into the bustle. She wears a gold bangle on her left wrist and a glittering blue stone ring on the ring finger of that hand. She stands before a chaise longue—a half chair, half sofa—edged with gold and upholstered with gold fabric. A swath of ivory-colored fabric hangs behind her like a curtain. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower right corner in dark brown paint: “John S. Sargent 1883.”