Focus on this artwork and explore the Critical reception.
At its debut in the New English Art Club exhibition in 1887, Portrait of Mrs. Cecil Wade was given very mixed reviews. F.D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley from The Spectator extolled the "individuality and life in the face of the sitter," while also chastising its "forced" use of light in the foreground and "cold" manner in which the painting was executed, resulting in "no hint of tenderness, no suspicion of poetry" in the work at large. Furthermore, while the Saturday Review (London) praised Sargent, who "[sent] a brilliant and admirably handled likeness of a lady in white (cat. no. 55) against a charmingly painted interior," the Illustrated London News noted once more Sargent's disregard for the personhood of Mrs. Wade, stating that "Mr. Sargent's 'Portrait of a Lady' (cat. no. 55) in white satin suggests that her arms and face were made of cardboard".At its acquisition by the Nelson-Atkins Museum in 1986, the painting was regarded as "a stellar example of Sargent's work", and fetched the highest price ever paid for a Sargent painting at that time.
Saturday Review (London) Illustrated London News The Spectator New English Art Club