Lady Mary Victoria Leiter Curzon

Mary Victoria Leiter Curzon was the American-born wife of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, and one of the most celebrated figures in Edwardian society. Franz von Lenbach, the Munich portraitist known as the 'Raphael of the Wilhelmine era,' painted her around 1901, the year before her death at thirty-six. Lenbach specialised in portraits of statesmen and aristocracy, and his image of Lady Curzon captures the moment of her greatest social prominence. Held at the National Portrait Gallery, the work documents both a remarkable individual and Lenbach's unmatched access to the elite of the British and German worlds.

Lenbach employs his characteristic warm brown ground, building the face in luminous glazes that give skin a translucent inner glow. The background dissolves into tonal darkness, focusing all attention on the sitter's features in a technique indebted to Rembrandt's Old Master portraiture.