The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant

Artist:: John Singer Sargent (American, Florence 1856–1925 London)

Date:: 1899

Medium:: Oil on canvas

Dimensions:: 115 x 84 1/8 in. (292.1 x 213.7 cm)

Classification:: Paintings

Credit Line:: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1927

Accession Number:: 27.67

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 771

The three daughters of the Honorable Percy Wyndham, a wealthy Londoner, appear in this monumental canvas. From the left, they are Madeline Adeane (1869–1941), Pamela Tennant (1871–1928), and Mary Constance, Lady Elcho (1862–1937). Sargent painted them in the drawing room of their family’s residence on Belgrave Square. Seen on the wall above them is George Frederic Watts’s portrait of their mother (private collection), which establishes their genealogy and reminds viewers of Sargent’s ties to older artists. Displayed in 1900 at the Royal Academy, The Wyndham Sisters was hailed by the critics and dubbed “The Three Graces” by the Prince of Wales.

Signature: [at lower right]: John S. Sargent

the Wyndham family, until 1927; with M. Knoedler and Company, London, 1926–1927

Essays
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

Timelines
The United States and Canada, 1800–1900 A.D.

American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent
American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1846 and 1864
The Artist Project
"A Bicentennial Treasury: American Masterpieces from the Metropolitan": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 33, no. 4 (Winter, 1975–1976)
"John Singer Sargent in The Metropolitan Museum of Art": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 57, no. 4 (Spring, 2000)
Masterpieces of American Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 26, no. 3 (November, 1967)
A Walk Through The American Wing