One hundred years after John Singer Sargent’s death, Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits arrives at Kenwood House in North London with bold bravado. This is not just a parade of Gilded Age ladies but a sharp re-examination of the women who once stood, often reluctantly, at the centre of transatlantic social engineering. Eighteen portraits, some never before exhibited publicly, dismantle the tired caricature of the ‘dollar princess’ with startling intimacy.
Sargent, the preeminent portraitist of his era, wielded his brush like a social historian reinterpreting Gainsborough. His brush reveals the chemistry of transatlantic nobility – unions negotiated for coronets, but equally partnerships that thrust these women into positions of absolute power. The show’s genius emerges in resisting reducing these figures to mere ornaments in all their finery. Take Jessie Wilton Phipps, who was resplendent in pearls and stripes in 1884 and would later campaign tirelessly for London’s blind. Or Nancy Astor, first rendered as a bacchante in 1908, then re-emerging in 1923 charcoal as Britain’s first sitting female MP—her politician’s gaze a world away from debutante diffidence.
The curatorial hand here is deft. Sargent’s transition from oil to charcoal after 1907 proves revelatory; the latter medium strips away ornament to expose character. Consuelo Vanderbilt’s never-before-seen portrait is particularly revealing—the Duchess of Marlborough’s famed wedding day tears seem to linger in the grain of the paper. These works collectively chart a seismic cultural shift: the moment America’s new money didn’t buy into European aristocracy, but began reshaping it.
English Heritage curator Wendy Monkhouse approaches this exhibition from a different angle, rightly framing this exhibition as corrective history. The ‘cash for coronets’ narrative collapses under the weight of individual stories—of political careers forged, philanthropic legacies launched, and sometimes love unconcerned with ledgers. Kenwood’s Adam-designed neoclassical galleries, relics of Britain’s stratified past, become an ironically perfect setting for this myth dismantling.
The exhibition’s contributors —Dame Jenny Abramsky’s advocacy, Richard Ormond’s scholarly rigour—ensure this isn’t just another Sargent exhibition, but a rehabilitation with a purpose. When Sophia Weston of the Garfield Weston Foundation speaks of ‘bringing world-class art to tell new stories,’ one senses the quiet radicalism at play: these women are finally being seen as something more than the sum of their dowries.
By the final portrait, the label’ dollar princess’ feels reductive and obsolete. What remains are women who leveraged their improbable positions to leave marks far deeper than their fortunes.
Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits runs at Kenwood until 5 October 2025. — Words/Photo Paul Carter Robinson © Artlyst 2025