Margaret Lushington, Mrs Stephen Langton Massingberd (d.1906)

This 1903 portrait of Margaret Lushington, who became Mrs Stephen Langton Massingberd and died in 1906, represents Hughes's late activity as a portraitist at the turn of the twentieth century. By 1903 Hughes was in his early seventies, his Pre-Raphaelite period decades in the past, and his late portraits show the influence of his long career translated into a more relaxed but still precise personal style. Margaret Lushington was connected to the social and cultural circles around the arts and crafts movement and progressive Victorian and Edwardian society. The National Trust's holding of this portrait suggests it passed through a country house collection associated with the Lushington or Massingberd family. Late Victorian and Edwardian portraiture was dominated by the fashionable society painters — Sargent, Lavery, Orpen — and Hughes's quieter, more personally observed approach to portraiture represents a deliberate distance from that fashionable market.

The late portrait on canvas shows Hughes maintaining careful attention to facial modelling while the costume and setting receive more relaxed treatment. The palette of a late Victorian portrait would be warm and relatively conservative, avoiding the intense saturated colors of his 1850s Pre-Raphaelite work. The sitter's age and social position are communicated through careful observation rather than flattery.