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We praise the delicate rendering of the gauzy kerchief veiling her neck, but it is far less wonderful than the delicate interpretation of her expression. The fine sensitiveness of her nature, her lively fancy and sense of humor, her playfulness, her coquetry, her impulsiveness, her volatile temperament—all this we read in the shining eyes and the smiling mouth, though no one can say how they were made to tell so much. The signs of her birth and breeding are in every line, yet she is something of a Bohemian too. There is a delightful sense of camaraderie in her smile.

There is a certain portrait by Leonardo da Vinci known as the Mona Lisa, and famous for its baffling smile. There is a tantalizing quality about it which makes one forever wonder what the lady is thinking about and why she is smiling. Nothing could be more in contrast than this smile of Miss Bingham. There is no mystery in it, but rather it takes us into her confidence in the most winning way.

The costume interests us not only as a reminder of bygone fashions, but for its picturesqueness. The bodice is ornamented only by the big buttons by which it is laced. A narrow belt finishes it at the waist, with a small buckle in front.

The hair is frizzed in puffy masses about the face, escaping in a few curls which fall over the shoulders. This was evidently the favorite coiffure in the year 1786, as the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire with her Child, painted in the same year, shows precisely the same style. Both ladies also wear low-cut bodices with kerchiefs arranged in the same manner. The finishing touch of Miss Bingham's costume is the big straw hat worn aslant on the back of the head.

It has been a favorite device of great portrait painters to dress their sitters in all sorts of fanciful headwear. Rembrandt's portraits show an endless variety of caps, turbans, and hats. Rubens was fond of painting broad-brimmed hats shading the face, one of his celebrated pictures being a study of this kind called Le Chapeau de Paille (The Straw Hat).