Kenwood exhibition seeks to tell fuller story of wealthy American women who crossed the Atlantic for a husband

Margaret “Daisy” Leiter was just 19 when in 1898 she was painted by the most celebrated society portraitist of the age, John Singer Sargent. Leiter, the youngest daughter of an American retail magnate, was a celebrated beauty who was said to have “the loveliest eyes in Washington”.

Sargent’s resulting portrait, in which Leiter stands full length, exuberantly swathed in fabric, radiates with the monied self-assurance of a young woman fully aware of her own social power.