Although a major art patron and an artist, she is most remembered as a hostess for the cultural elite, including Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry and Augustus John.

[8] The wealthy Sands circulated among London society, including writer and statesman John Morley, politician William Ewart Gladstone, writer Henry James, artist John Singer Sargent, the Rothschild family, and Henry Graham White.

Mahlon's sister, Katherine, was married to journalist and newspaper editor Edwin Lawrence Godkin.

[nb 3] John Singer Sargent painted the portrait of her mother, who was considered "a famous society beauty of her day.

"[2][7] Mary Sands was "much admired" by writer Henry James, who called her "that gracious lady" and based his heroic character "Madame de Mauves" on her.

[13] While her father was considered handsome[10] and her mother beautiful, Anthony Powell states that some people wrote in their diaries and letters that she was plain.

In her later years, Powell met her and said that "so great was her elegance, charm, capacity to be amusing in a no-nonsense manner, that I could well believed her to be good-looking in her youth.

Tate suggests that was inspired by Édouard Vuillard's dry brush technique, colour palette and depiction of "intimate" scenes.

[28] Affiliated with the Bloomsbury Group,[29] she was best-known as "one of the leading artist hostesses of her time", her lavish affairs were financially possible due to the significant wealth she inherited from her parents.

Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry and Arnold Bennett were among the writers of the "cultural elite" who visited her.

[2] Her friends included artist Jacques-Émile Blanche, writer Edith Wharton, poet William Butler Yeats, essayist and critic Logan Pearsall Smith and novelist Howard Overing Sturgis.

[7] Lytton Strachey (a founder of the Bloomsbury Group) met at Sands' house[16][30] and her uncle, Edwin Lawrence Godkin wrote of his upcoming visit to Sands' house in Oxfordshire, "There one fortnight, and then back to "holy wars", patriotism, and buncombe..."[7][31] She was a patron and collector of works by other contemporary artists.

For instance, she commissioned Boris Anrep, a Russian immigrant, to create mosaics and murals in her Vale, Chelsea house.

[12] She was described as a "plain woman of immense charm, cultivation and perception, and a painter of considerable talent" in the Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction.

[2] Friend Virginia Woolf wrote a sketch based upon her called "The Lady in the Looking Glass", subtitled "A Reflection", about a time that she saw her come "in from the garden and not reading her letters."