Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (Mrs. John Jay Chapman)

John Singer Sargent, Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (Mrs. John Jay Chapman), 1893, oil on canvas, 49 ³⁄₈ x 40 ¹⁄₂ in. (125.4 x 102.9 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Chanler A. Chapman, 1980.71

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Artwork Details

Title: Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (Mrs. John Jay Chapman)
Artist: John Singer Sargent
Date: 1893
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum
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2nd Floor
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East Wing
Dimensions: 49 ³⁄₈ x 40 ¹⁄₂ in. (125.4 x 102.9 cm.)
Credit Line: Gift of Chanler A. Chapman
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Object — art object — painting
Architecture Interior — domestic — living room
Architecture Interior — domestic — house
Object Number: 1980.71
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1980.71

Artwork Description

According to Sargent, twenty-six-year old Elizabeth Chanler had "the face of the Madonna and the eyes of a child." This portrait shows a beautiful, well-bred woman who has learned to be strong. When Elizabeth was still a girl, her mother died, leaving her to help care for seven younger brothers and sisters. Sargent painted her while she was in London for a brother's wedding, and the artist composed the portrait as if to suggest a turmoil of emotions in his sitter.

The top half of the portrait is ordered and still. Elizabeth's gaze is direct, her face centered between two paintings: a Madonna and Child and a figure of an old woman copied from Frans Hals. But the lower half is full of tension. Her arms, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and the pillows seem to wrestle with one another; only her clasped fingers and elbows keep everything under control. Perhaps the artist wished to show Elizabeth as a woman who, despite early hardships, was neither maiden nor matron. Sargent was often dismissed by his contemporaries as a "society portraitist," but his paintings always convey the human story behind the image.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006

Works by this artist (8 items)

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Smithsonian American Art Museum Director Elizabeth Broun shares her thoughts about personal favorites from the museum collection. Learn more about Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler by John Singer Sargent.

BETSY BROUN: Some pictures are fun just to look at, even before you know anything about them. “Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler” by Sargent is full of visual echoes and effects that reward close looking. Everything above the horizon line of the sofa back is symmetrical and calm, in a shallow space. The perfect oval of Miss Chanler’s head is exactly centered, and it’s balanced by the stable verticals and horizontals of two framed objects. Her eyes, flanking the perpendicular of her nose and mouth, meet ours in a fixed stare. Who will blink first?

Below the sofa line, powerful shapes of black ball gown and restless pillow patterns contend for dominance in a deeper, churning space. These forces are barely held in check by tightly locked hands and arms. They are symbolically vanquished by a Renaissance jewel. One pillow is pinned by an elbow, creating a bullseye, and a ripple effect in the pattern. Sleeve puffs threaten to escape into the upper register. William Kloss best captured these tensions when he wrote of the young woman’s “inner ardor under fierce control, her strength of purpose and nervous strain.”

Elizabeth Chanler was born in 1866 to distinguished parents. Her father was a Democratic congressman from New York. Her mother was a descendant of John Jacob Astor. But when her mother died prematurely, Bessie was left to help care for seven younger brothers and sisters. The portrait here suggests the contest of discipline and emotion that she must often have experienced.

Sargent painted her portrait in his London studio when Elizabeth Chanler was there for her brother’s wedding. She was twenty-six, an age when most women were tending children of their own. Sargent included a couple of paintings from his collection in the picture. These have been identified as a Madonna and Child on the right, and a copy of an old woman from a Frans Hals painting on the left. Did the artist intentionally fix Elizabeth halfway between motherhood and old age?

The portrait was commissioned in 1893 by Elizabeth’s younger sister, Margaret. Margaret kept it in her home until her death in 1963. Elizabeth did marry just five years after her portrait was painted, and the painting ultimately passed to her son Chandler Chapman, who generously donated it to the National Museum of American Art in 1980.