Ellen Sears Amory Anderson Curtis (1868-1952) (Mrs. Charles Pelham Curtis)

Ellen Sears Amory Anderson Curtis was a prominent member of Boston's Brahmin social elite — her family lineage connecting to the founding generation of New England society — and Sargent's 1903 portrait of her at the Portland Museum of Art is a document of the Bostonian culture that valued his services most highly in his American working periods. Sargent's Boston portraits from the early twentieth century serve as a visual chronicle of the city's patrician class at the peak of its self-confidence before the social disruptions of the First World War. The portrait's retention in Maine rather than Boston may reflect Mrs. Curtis's connections to the northern New England coast where Boston families summered.

The portrait is built on Sargent's mastery of dark tonality — the dark background and fashionable dark dress focusing all light on the face and any white fabric. The face is modeled with his characteristic assurance, the brushwork fluid and seemingly effortless, the impression of a specific human presence achieved through remarkably economical means.