Jane 'Jeanie' Elizabeth Hughes, Mrs Nassau John Senior (1828-1877)

Watts painted Jane Elizabeth Hughes — known as Jeanie — around 1857, a portrait of a woman who would become Mrs Nassau John Senior and an important figure in Victorian social reform. Jane Nassau Senior was a pioneer of women's involvement in public administration, becoming the first woman appointed as an inspector in the Local Government Board in 1873. Watts painted her during the earlier years of his mature portrait practice when she was still Jane Hughes, and the portrait captures a young woman of evident intelligence and force of personality who was moving in the progressive intellectual circles of mid-Victorian London. The National Trust's canvas preserves this as one of Watts's many portraits of women who played significant but often overlooked roles in Victorian public life. His capacity to identify and convey the qualities of character that would drive such achievements gives his portraits an unusual biographical depth.

The oil on canvas deploys Watts's characteristic portrait approach from the late 1850s: warm, relatively simply modelled background, concentrated attention on the face, and sufficient attention to dress to establish the social register without allowing it to dominate. The rendering of the face balances the aesthetic demands of portraiture with Watts's psychological interest in the sitter as a specific individual.