Feb 18, 2024

Musée d’Orsay buys intriguing Millais portrait from Bagshawe Fine Art

A typically accomplished late 19th century portrait by Sir John Everett Millais has assumed a new identity after some in-depth research by Bagshawe Fine Art. This portrait, commissioned by the well-known art-dealer Charles Wertheimer and long-assumed to be of his first wife has now in fact been incontrovertibly shown to be a portrait of Wertheimer’s long-term mistress, one Sarah Hammond. This picture hung with Wertheimer’s own portrait by Millais in his London rooms and the two were shown as ‘Mr & Mrs Charles Wertheimer’ in a number of subsequent exhibitions, including the Millais memorial exhibition in 1898. Separated since Charles Wertheimer’s death in 1911, the two pictures will now be re-united – and properly titled – at the Musée D’Orsay in Paris, who already own Millais’ portrait of Charles Wertheimer.