Die Wyndham-Schwestern: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane und Mrs. Tennant

Sargent painted the three Wyndham sisters in the drawing room of their family's house on Belgrave Square in London over the early months of 1899. They belonged to a clever, well-connected circle of friends nicknamed the Souls, and Sargent gave them an ease that looks effortless and was not. On the wall behind them, half in shadow, hangs an older portrait of their mother by the painter George Frederic Watts, so three generations gather in one frame. When the picture went on show at the Royal Academy, the Prince of Wales, soon to be Edward VII, dubbed it the Three Graces, and the name stuck. In 1927, near the height of Sargent's fame, the family sold it to the Metropolitan Museum for 20,000 pounds.