A major John Singer Sargent exhibition will open at Kenwood in London in 2025, English Heritage has announced. Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits will gather together, for the first time, eighteen magnificent portraits of women once dismissively known as the “Dollar Princesses”. A war-time nurse, a helicopter pilot and the first sitting female MP among them, the exhibition will reveal the often-overshadowed lives of these fascinating American women who crossed the Atlantic to marry British aristocrats in an exchange of money for titles.

On the centenary of his death, the exhibition will be a salute to John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), the most admired and sought-after portraitist of the Gilded Age on both sides of the Atlantic. These portraits represent some of his most glamorous and powerful works. In addition to full-length oil paintings, masterful charcoal portraits will also feature, depicting their subjects in a candid and perceptive light.

Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits is curated by English Heritage with the charity drawing upon the expertise of Richard Ormond CBE, renowned Sargent scholar and the artist’s great-nephew who is exhibition consultant.

Wendy Monkhouse, English Heritage’s Curator of the exhibition said: “Heiress will explore a side to Sargent’s portraits not often considered: the women behind the works. Dismissed historically as the ‘Dollar Princesses’, their stories were far more complex, and their reach stretched beyond the boundaries of their marriages. Exploring the reality behind the label, visitors will also witness Sargent’s mastery of portraiture at a time when the seeds of the Special Relationship between England and America were sown.”

Among the treasures included in the exhibition will be Kenwood’s own magnificent portrait of Daisy Leiter, a Chicago heiress who married the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, as well as private loans and major international loans of Edith, Lady Playfair from the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and Mrs Joseph Chamberlain (pictured) from the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits is supported by The Friends of the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, the American Friends of English Heritage, the Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, Rockefeller Capital Management, Gregory and Melissa Fleming, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and other generous supporters.

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