Lady Agnew of Lochnaw is an oil on canvas portrait painting of Gertrude Agnew, the wife of Sir Andrew Agnew, 9th Baronet. The painting was commissioned in 1892 and completed the same year by the American portrait artist John Singer Sargent. It measures and is owned by the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. The museum acquired it through the Cowan Smith Bequest Fund in 1925. Background Gertrude Vernon was born in 1865, the daughter of the Hon. Gowran Vernon and granddaughter of Robert Vernon, 1st Baron Lyveden. She married Sir Andrew Noel Agnew, 9th Baronet of Lochnaw Castle in Wigtownshire in 1889. A few years later, during 1892, he commissioned John Singer Sargent to paint her portrait. The success of the painting endowed her with additional notoriety and prestige. There is speculation that the family may have met with financial difficulties resulting in an attempt to sell the painting to the Trustees of the Frick Collection in 1922 but the offer was rejected by Helen Clay Frick. Lady Agnew died in London in April 1932 after suffering ill health for a long time. Description Lady Agnew is seated in an 18th-century French Bergère and, according to art historian Richard Ormond, the back of the chair is used as a "curving, supporting space to contain the figure, creating a distinctive, languid elegance". Sargent pictured her in a three-quarter length pose, dressed in a white gown with a silk mauve sash as an accessory round her waist. The wall behind her is draped with Chinese silk of a blue colour. She looks directly and appraisingly, her expression capturing the impression she is participating in an "intimate conversation" with those observing the painting. Ormond and Kilmurray remark that she was convalescing from influenza at the time, which may account for the languor in her pose. They describe her gaze as "quietly challenging" and "something withheld and inviting in her quizzical half-smile". The oil on canvas measures . The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1893 and may have been influential in the artist's acceptance as an associate of the Academy the following January. According to an unattributed article in The Times dated 29 April 1893, the portrait was "not only a triumph of technique but the finest example of portraiture, in the literal sense of the word, that has been seen here for a long time. While Mr Sargent