Portrait of Pauline
Astor, 1898-99
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Oil on canvas, 98 x 50 in.
On loan by The William Morris Collection
The Portrait of Pauline Astor (1898-99) is John Singer Sargent's largest and most impressive full-length portrait in a landscape setting. The Honourable Pauline Astor (1880-1970), was the eldest daughter of the American financier William Waldorf Astor, who emigrated from New York to London.
William Waldorf Astor purchased the grand estate Cliveden in 1893 from the Duke of Westminster, who owned the Portrait of Jonathan Buttall, The Blue Boy (1770), Sir Thomas Gainsborough's greatest masterpiece.
John Singer Sargent was at the height of his artistic powers and about to undertake the commission of his lifetime: to paint the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the world; and, to challenge two of the greatest grand-manner portraitists in the history of art, Sir Anthony Van Dyck and Sir Thomas Gainsborough.
Sargent rose to the challenge, fully realizing the ironic similarities. The beautiful Pauline Astor was 18 years of age, the same age as Jonathan Buttall when Gainsborough painted Blue Boy. Sargent was 43 years old at the time he painted Pauline Astor, the same age as Gainsborough when he painted The Blue Boy. It was 129 years after the death of Van Dyck that Gainsborough painted The Blue Boy; and it was 129 years after the creation of The Blue Boy that Sargent was about to take on the greatest challenge the world had ever seen in the grand-manner style of portraiture.