From: Matt Davies  
Matt D  avies@jssgallery.org
Date:   Fri, 21 Jun 2002   

Natasha - 

This  is one of my favorite Sargent finds.  It is called 'Three Sisters, from Charcoal Drawings by John S. Sargent,' and appeared in The Century Magazine in 1914.  It contains the two of the charcoal drawings of Nancy Astor that you already have posted on your site, but it also contains charcoal drawings of two of her four sisters, Phyllis and Nora which I have never seen reproduced anywhere else. 

I found  the following info on the three drawings in the recent book Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia by James Fox (Simon and Schuster, 2000), page 103: 
 

Between 1907 and 1908, John Singer Sargent drew Nancy, Phyllis and Nora; Nancy with piercing, alert eyes, Nora with wild, loose curls looking vague. A mark of Sargent's talent was his ability to reveal his subject's character, especially the women, by painting them as they wished to appear to the world and to society.  The portrait of Phyllis is not one of his best - it has a tightness and pertness about it that makes her look pleadingly sweet.  But the mouth slightly curled at the corner, hinting at a smile, the long neck, the delicate clothes, gives her the look of a fresh, classic beauty, at ease with herself.  The melancholy is in the liquid rim of the eyes, the weight on the lids - a subtle touch of charcoal drawing.  It is a portrait of the period, resembling those other Sargent sitters of the time, described by the Boston art critic Trevor Fairbrother as the 'intelligent, lovely, compassionate yet sad omen that appear in Henry James's fiction.'