Agnes Anstruther-Thomson was the daughter of James Alexander Guthrie, a director of the Bank of England. In 1882, she married the prominent Scottish landowner Charles Anstruther-Thomson. A fashionable member of London society, she held salons at the couple’s townhouse in Rutland Gate. Her sister-in-law, the writer and artist Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, was a close friend and student of John Singer Sargent, and had posed for him a decade earlier in 1889.

Mrs. Charles Anstruther-Thomson is a work of stunning subtlety and balance. Using a narrow range of light and color, the artist captures the tone and texture of his model's diaphanous dress, which reveals her attractive sinuous silhouette.  Sargent’s use of dramatic chiaroscuro and vigorously applied impressionistic brushstrokes exemplifies his expertise in capturing the fleeting effects of light. The bright yellow highlights of her dress are reflected harmoniously in the side table, while the rosy flesh tones of her face are set off by the warm red highlights in her gown. The present work is a striking example of Sargent’s genius in portraiture, demonstrating his ability to capture a complete impression through the distillation of an observed moment. 

In discussing Sargent’s portraiture from the 1890s, Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray have noted: “Many of Sargent’s sitters in the 1890s were members of the new plutocracy, who were transforming traditional upper-class society. Together with American millionaires, they created a boom in the market for the work of English portrait painters of the eighteenth century, whose popularity and prices soared during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. […] It is not difficult to see why Sargent should have appealed to this new type of patron. The artist endowed them with social prestige, power and glamour – they were sanctioned by the sweep of his brush” (John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the 1890s, vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 2002, p. 4).