Henry James

Accustomed to international travel since childhood, the novelist Henry James was more comfortable in Europe than in the United States. In his fiction, James frequently explored the conflicts that arose when the “new” society of the United States encountered the “old” world of aristocratic European manners and mores. Works such as Daisy Miller (1879) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881) chronicle the misunderstandings and misadventures experi-enced by spirited young women traveling abroad.

Although James ultimately claimed British citizen-ship, he retained his sense of identification with the United States. A close friend of the American novelist Edith Wharton, James was visiting her in Paris when he agreed to sit for this portrait by the French painter Jacques-Émile Blanche. Pleased with the final product, which disguised his girth, James declared, “it has a certain dignity of intention and indication of who and what, poor creature, he is!"