Edith, Lady Playfair (Edith Russell)

Edith Russell grew up in Boston, the daughter of Samuel Hammond Russell. In 1878, at about 30, she married Lyon Playfair, a Scottish chemist who had gone into Liberal politics, twice widowed and 30 years older than she was. He had first met her family by chance, at a shared dinner table in a hotel in The Hague. The couple settled in South Kensington in London, and in 1883, when he stepped down as Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, he was knighted. So when Sargent painted her the following year, she had only recently become Lady Playfair. She stands at three-quarter length in a cream satin bodice tied with bows over a black skirt, a black band with a jewel at her throat, one hand resting on a small vase of flowers. The canvas is signed and dated 1884 in the upper left corner. In 2025 it was lent to Kenwood House in London for an exhibition of Sargent's portraits of American heiresses, and one reviewer found her bearing haughty, in keeping with her reserved New England roots. She outlived her husband by 34 years, and the museum received the portrait under her will in 1933.