Charles Stewart, Sixth Marquess of Londonderry, Carrying the Great Sword of State at the Coronation of King Edward VII, August, 1902, and Mr. W. C. Beaumont, His Page on That Occasion

When this portrait was shown at the Royal Academy in London in 1904, the critic Roger Fry predicted its fate. Dealers in old masters sometimes cut large canvases into smaller pieces that sold more easily, and Fry wrote that the page would one day be cut out and make a charming morceau by itself, a choice little picture. The page is the boy on the right, Wentworth Beaumont, 12 years old at the coronation of Edward VII in August 1902, where he carried the train of his uncle's robes and held his coronet. His uncle, the Marquess of Londonderry, carried the Great Sword of State that day, one of five swords borne in the procession. The marchioness commissioned the portrait. Sargent posed the marquess in his London studio in the full regalia he had worn, and afterwards thanked him for those arduous sittings in panoply. The background, a pier of Westminster Abbey lit by coloured light from its windows, was reworked late from sketches Sargent made in the abbey. The canvas stayed whole. It hung in the ballroom of Londonderry House on Park Lane until the family sold the house and then the picture, and it came to Boston in 2003.