Ellinor Guthrie (née Stirling)

Frederic Leighton, 1830–1896

1865

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A woman in a voluminous black dress stands beside a table with a vase of flowers, looking over her shoulder. She holds a single flower in her right hand. From the flowing silk of Ellinor Guthrie’s dress to the delicate petals of the flowers she arranges, Leighton renders the material world so sensuously as to make his scene feel almost real. The opulence of Guthrie’s clothing and surroundings not only creates a world of visual pleasure but also reflects her social status. The daughter of James Stirling, who drove Britain’s colonization of Western Australia and became the colony’s first governor, Ellinor became even wealthier when she married a banker, James Alexander Guthrie. Sittings for this portrait were delayed by a long recovery following the birth of her fifth child. The wiltin