Arthur James Balfour, I conde de Balfour

By 1908 John Singer Sargent was the portraitist every important man in Britain wanted, and Arthur Balfour was one of the most important, a former prime minister out of office since 1905 and now leading the Opposition. Members of his Carlton Club clubbed together to pay for this full-length, and Sargent gave them the complete grand manner: Balfour standing tall in a marble interior, one arm draped along the cornice, legs crossed with a cool, clever ease. It is the portrait of a politician painted as a detached aesthete. When it was shown at the Royal Academy that year, one reviewer called it the most important thing in the exhibition. Balfour would give his name, a decade on, to the 1917 declaration on Palestine.