Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (Mrs. John Jay Chapman)

In the spring of 1893 Elizabeth Chanler was in London for one of her brothers' weddings, and while she was there her sister Margaret arranged for John Singer Sargent to paint her. She was 26, an Astor heiress who had lost her mother young and helped raise seven younger brothers and sisters. Sargent said she had the face of a Madonna and the eyes of a child, and he built the picture around that split. Above the waist she is composed, her gaze steady, with a small Madonna and Child and an old woman copied from Frans Hals behind her. Below, the leg-of-mutton sleeves and the pillows seem to shift and press, held in check only by her clasped hands.