John Singer Sargent’s Mrs. Cecil Wade shows a very stylish Frances Frew Wade.

This young and glamorous socialite was a married woman by 1863. The lucky fella was Cecil Wade, a London stockbroker. Sounds like the making of an uneventful but luxurious life. Frances was only twenty years old when she married Cecil. 

For the painting, Frances chose to wear the simply-to-die-for white satin dress, which she had the honour of wearing for the Queen of England when they met. Now that’s something to write home about, or have painted. Sargent, recognized for his great skills as a portraitist, was already known in the exclusive social circles of Mrs. Cecil Wade. It was only a matter of time before she had her portrait painted by him. 

Frances' husband Cecil knew his way around a painting, having an expansive knowledge in art and literature. You could say Frances bagged a cultured man. Frances had her own impressions of Sargent, finding him to be “very shy and difficult to talk to during the sitting.” It was known that Frances herself was shy, not to mention reserved. What do you expect when you put two introverts in a room together? Someone has to break the ice or it’s going to be the walls talking. 

Sargent was just thirty years old when he painted Mrs. Cecil Wade in 1886. He had recently reached a point of crisis in his career. His painting Madam X had caused a scandal in Paris when it was displayed at the Salon in 1884, forcing Sargent to pack up shop and move to England in search of new clientele. Mrs. Cecil Wade was his first London commission post-scandal. Likely because of that, it's far more conservative than his painting of Madame X.  But while it is more demure in terms of pose, fashion, and subject, the painting nevertheless showcases Sargent's experimental approach to painting portraits with brightly lit figures placed before dark interior spaces. Mrs. Cecil Wade was one of two paintings Sargent submitted to the New England Art Club in 1887. It was met with middling reviews, but he didn't have to leave the country because of it, so that counts as a success.