Portrait of Arabella Worsham (later Arabella Huntington)

Cabanel painted Arabella Worsham in 1882, shortly before her marriage to the American railway magnate Collis P. Huntington, after which she became Arabella Huntington and one of the wealthiest women in the United States. Her portrait by Cabanel — then the most prestigious academic portrait painter in Paris — was both a status symbol and a genuine psychological document. Arabella was a woman of considerable intelligence and cultural ambition who used her extraordinary wealth to build one of the finest private art collections in America, subsequently donated to what is now the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino, California. Cabanel captures her with characteristic elegance and psychological directness. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco hold this work, connecting it to the West Coast cultural institutions her eventual husband helped shape.

The portrait employs Cabanel's formal portrait mode: three-quarter pose, careful attention to the sitter's dress and jewellery as indices of social position, and a face rendered with his characteristic smooth modelling. The dark background concentrates all light on the figure. Arabella's direct gaze and composed expression convey strength of character.