제9대 말버러 공작과 그의 가족의 초상

Sargent painted this at Blenheim Palace in 1905, and he made it to hang beside an older Reynolds group portrait of an earlier Marlborough family, matching its grand scale and its debt to Van Dyck. The Duke stands in the robes of the Order of the Garter, his American wife beside him, their two small sons in front, a marble bust of the first Duke looking down from above. Consuelo Vanderbilt had married him in New York in 1895, her railway fortune helping to keep this vast house standing. The match had been pushed through by her mother, and neither of them had wanted it. The year after Sargent finished this composed, confident family, Consuelo left the Duke for good.