Mrs. George Swinton (Elizabeth Ebsworth)

Painted in 1897, Mrs. George Swinton is among the grandest and most admired of John Singer Sargent’s full-length society portraits. Elizabeth Ebsworth, a belle of Anglo-American London, is shown in a sweeping white gown with a cloud of veiling about her, posed with exquisite artifice beside a tall panel and a swag of silvery drapery, her pale form suspended like a lily in the deep tones behind her. Sargent, at the very height of his fame as the portraitist of Edwardian society, brought his whole repertory to the canvas — the virtuoso handling of white paint, the shimmer of space, the sense of a woman both present and remote. The Metropolitan and Chicago vied for the picture at the great sale of 1901, and Chicago secured it as the anchor of its modern collection. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.