Ellen Peabody Endicott (Mrs. William Crowninshield Endicott)

Sargent's portrait of Ellen Peabody Endicott (1901), wife of President Cleveland's Secretary of War, captures a prominent figure of Boston Brahmin society with the confidence and luxury his sitters expected. The Endicotts were one of the great families of New England, and this portrait was a significant social commission. Sargent had by this date established himself as the supreme portrait painter of the Anglo-American upper class, able to convey both physical presence and social authority with apparently effortless technique. The National Gallery of Art in Washington holds this as part of an important collection of his American society portraits.

Sargent renders Mrs. Endicott with the fluid, broad brushwork that characterised his mature portraiture — confident passages of cream and white for the dress, warm tones building the face with minimal but precisely placed strokes. The dark background focuses attention on the figure's luminosity. Hands and face receive the most careful treatment while drapery is handled with virtuoso economy.