Mabel Elizabeth Hammersley, née Lilford (b.c.1888), Mrs Hugh Hammersley

Philip Wilson Steer produced a small but significant body of portrait work alongside his landscapes, and this 1913 portrait of Mabel Elizabeth Hammersley is among his most formally ambitious. The Hammersley family were prominent in British high society, and Hugh Hammersley, whom Mabel had married, was a partner in Cox and Co., the bankers. Steer's portraits occupy an interesting position: trained in the French Impressionist tradition rather than the grand portrait tradition of Van Dyck and Reynolds, he brought a colorist's eye to a genre demanding representation of social status as much as individual character. The Government Art Collection holds this work, placing it in the official British state collection of portraits. By 1913 Steer was established enough in British art—professor at the Slade since 1893—to receive society portrait commissions alongside his landscape work.

Oil on canvas with the confident, somewhat loose handling Steer brought to portraiture compared to French academic convention. The dress and setting likely receive the same Impressionist light treatment as his landscape work.