Lady Curzon

Franz von Lenbach painted Lady Curzon—Mary Leiter Curzon, Vicereine of India and a prominent society figure—in 1902, near the end of his long reign as portraitist to European aristocracy and high society. Lenbach's Munich studio functioned almost like a court, and commissions from international celebrities sustained its prestige. Mary Curzon, an American heiress who married Lord Curzon and became one of the most photographed women of the Edwardian era, sat for this portrait at the height of her public prominence. The Alte Nationalgalerie holds the work among its collection of nineteenth-century portraiture.

Lenbach uses his signature dark, loosely brushed background to concentrate attention on the sitter's face and jewels. The rendering of fabric is gestural while the face receives more controlled glazing, a technique that gives his portraits their characteristic intensity.