There are certain portraits of women that have come down in history as masterpieces because they capture the allure and mysteriousness of their beautiful subjects and so illustrate both the individuality of a particular woman’s appeal and the strangeness of womanhood as a type. These portraits include Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”, Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring”, and Manet’s “Olympia”. The paintings have much in common. The women have a distinctive half smile, are imaginatively posed, and exhibit a combination of nonchalance and forwardness, as if all beautiful women have to be of that type. To be added to that list of great portraits, I think, is John Singer Sargent’s “Lady Agnew”, which has all of those attributes but is to be distinguished by the fact that the subject of the portrait is not really beautiful at all and yet Sargent is able to reveal that fact and still make her beautiful to behold, which says a lot about his mastery of portraiture but also about what it means to be a beauty in his time, at least among English speaking women in the wealthiest class of their societies.