Anna Pavlova (1881–1931), as 'The Dying Swan'

Lavery executed the portrait in oil on canvas, employing a palette dominated by whites, creams, and warm browns against a deep shadowed ground. Light falls from the upper left, illuminating the face, neck, and costume while allowing the background to recede. The brushwork is loose and visible, particularly in the costume and background, with thicker impasto in the voluminous skirt and more blended handling in the facial features. This differential treatment, combining painterly freedom in the textiles with delicate modelling of the physiognomy, is characteristic of Lavery's portraiture and reflects his engagement with contemporary developments in British and French painting. The oval format, noted in the physical description, lends a classical, medallion-like quality that elevates the subject beyond mere theatrical documentation toward iconic status.

The portrait relates closely to a larger, full-length depiction of Pavlova in the same role that Lavery painted for the Tate Gallery, inspired by her first London season and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1912. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum's object history, Pavlova's husband Victor Dandre did not feel that the Royal Academy portrait was a good likeness and preferred Lavery's head of Pavlova in The Bacchanale, which had been the great success at the first night of her initial London season. The present half-length work was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Mrs Leonore Lena Graham in 1989, entering the collection with accession number E.329-1990. The painting is currently not on display. A photogravure print after the related full-length composition, signed by both Pavlova and Lavery, is also held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, indicating the commercial circulation of the image during the period.

Lavery's engagement with Pavlova occurred during a period of intense British fascination with Russian ballet, particularly following Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes appearances in London. Pavlova first performed in London at private parties in 1909, including one for King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and made her public debut at the Palace Theatre in 1910, where she achieved what impresario Alfred Butt described as 'the greatest success of any artist in my memory.' The portrait thus belongs to a broader phenomenon of visual artists responding to the Ballets Russes and its stars; Pavlova appealed greatly to sculptors and painters, and multiple representations of her in this role circulated in fine and popular art. The work also reflects Lavery's established practice of painting celebrated performers and his position within British official art, having received numerous portrait commissions and academic recognition. Scholarship on the image has addressed its place within the iconography of The Dying Swan, distinguishing between performance-related documentation and independent artistic interpretation, and noting how Pavlova's own sculptural work on the theme further complicated the relationship between primary choreographic creation and subsequent visual representation.

The portrait contributes to the enduring visual mythology of Anna Pavlova as the 'Immortal Swan,' a figure who through relentless touring from her London base became ballet's first global celebrity. The image's afterlife was amplified by reproduction: the 1912 photogravure published by the Fine Arts Publishing Co. extended its reach beyond the museum walls, while the related full-length composition at Tate secured its place in public art collections. Pavlova's own sculptural interpretation of the role, though less examined, represents a further layer of creative agency that scholars have analysed as 'secondary relatively independent actor's activity.' The Dying Swan itself remained Pavlova's signature piece throughout her career, and visual representations like Lavery's helped fix its iconography in cultural memory. The Victoria and Albert Museum's holding of both the painting and a signed print testifies to the institutional recognition of this convergence of dance and visual art as a significant chapter in British cultural history, even as the work itself now rests in storage, its physical invisibility contrasting with its continued presence in scholarly and popular imagination of early modernist performance.