Mrs Langtry (1853–1929)

Lillie Langtry — born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton in 1853 in Jersey — was one of the most famous women in late Victorian Britain, a celebrated beauty, actress, and intimate of the Prince of Wales who also sat for several prominent artists including Millais and Burne-Jones. Poynter's 1878 portrait was painted during the height of her celebrity, when she was being lionized by London society. The Jersey Museum and Art Gallery holds the work, an appropriate destination given her birth on the island. Langtry's portraits form a documentary record of the most photographed and painted woman of her era outside the royal family, and Poynter's contribution adds an academically rigorous visual document to a celebrity iconography that included both fine art portraiture and commercial photography. The portrait reflects the social currency of painting a famous sitter as much as the sitter's desire for a definitive artistic record.

A celebrity portrait of this type required Poynter to balance likeness — Langtry's contemporaries would judge the resemblance — with the idealizing conventions of formal portraiture. His academic training gave him the tools for accurate physiognomy, while his professional instincts inclined toward a dignified presentation that would satisfy a socially prominent sitter. The treatment of her celebrated beauty would have been a particular challenge in maintaining accuracy while avoiding either flattery or unflattering exactitude.