Portrait of Nancy Astor

Sargent painted Nancy Astor in 1908, a few years into her marriage and well before the thing she is remembered for. She stands in a white dress with a pink sash, mid-stride, looking straight out with the quick, teasing confidence friends said could fill a room. She was American, from Virginia, and had married into one of the richest families in England. 11 years after this was painted, in 1919, she became the first woman to take her seat in the British House of Commons. Sargent caught her before any of that, purely as a young hostess at Cliveden, the Astor estate where the portrait still hangs high in the great hall.