A pencil and wash half-length portrait of Judith Gautier, seen three-quarters-right and leaning forwards against a dark background. Signed to left: John S Sargent.

Judith Gautier (1850-1918) was a writer and critic, particularly interested in Chinese and Japanese poetry - her translations were among the earliest to bring Chinese and Japanese poetry to European audiences. Sargent painted her several times in 1883. A version of this portrait was illustrated in the Art Journal of 1888, p. 69, titled 'Sketch of a Lady'; the accompanying text stated that "No one could compete with him in treating the mystery of real light and shadow, wrapping figures in a half gloom".

Sargent was the leading portrait painter of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, renowned for his dazzling bravura paintings of society beauties, artists, writers and statesmen of the 1880s and 1890s. His fellow artist Auguste Rodin described him as "the Van Dyck of our times".