Pauline Astor

In 1891 William Waldorf Astor, heir to one of the largest fortunes in America, moved his family from New York to England. Two years later he bought Cliveden, a great house above the Thames, and when his wife died in 1894 his eldest daughter Pauline, then 14, became the lady of the house. She was about 18 when Sargent, himself an American settled in London, painted her around 1898, and in 1899 her father became a British subject. Sargent set her in an autumn garden, in a white gown under a silver-blue cloak lined with fur, her hands in a muff. At her feet, tugging at the cloak, is her King Charles spaniel, Mossie. The canvas stands about two and a half metres tall, and it was first exhibited in the United States in 1998, a century after it was painted.