Vernon Lee

John Singer Sargent
(1856–1925)


Date 1881

Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the author and essayist born Violet Paget, and her story is one of unrequited love.

This portrait, by her lifelong friend John Singer Sargent, captures something of her intentional gender ambiguity: Lee wrote of her chosen name that ‘it has the advantage of leaving it undecided whether the writer be a man or a woman’.