After the scandal caused by Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X at the Paris Salon of 1884, the artist lost much of his French clientele and relocated to England in 1886 in search of new commissions.

The painting features a full-length rendering of Mrs. Wade in profile glancing to her right, her body portrayed at a sight angle, with a bright light washing over her fair skin and white satin dress.

She sits on a wooden bench upholstered with a red floral cushion, and is adorned with sparkling bracelets and a choker in addition to a white fan.

In the dimly lit background, midday light trickles in through a window covered by a yellow curtain and illuminates a small table and chair with a plant nearby.

[7] Most recently, Portrait of Mrs. Cecil Wade was included in a 1997 exhibition featuring paintings from Sargent’s early career at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA.

Maurice and Charles Kingsley from The Spectator extolled the "individuality and life in the face of the sitter," while also chastising its "forced" use of light in the foreground and "cold" manner in which the painting was executed, resulting in "no hint of tenderness, no suspicion of poetry" in the work at large.