Lady Maria Conyngham (died 1843) by Thomas Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence's 1825 portrait of Lady Maria Conyngham is a painting made to manage a scandal. Lady Maria's mother, Elizabeth Conyngham, was the very public mistress of King George IV. To absorb the family into his orbit, the king directed his court painter to produce portraits of the Conyngham daughters, a signal of royal approval that papered over the mess with extreme elegance.

Look at how Lawrence builds her respectability. The white empire dress, slightly low-cut but frothy and decorous, is a standard cue for unmarried virtue. Her hand resting on the dog, loosely, naturally, is a sign of fidelity and a relaxed intimacy that a more formal portrait would not allow. Lawrence's signature move is in the eyes: dark, glassy, heavily lidded, they meet the viewer with the same flattering hyper-presence he gave his royal sitters. The red drapery beneath her, meanwhile, is a technique borrowed from history painting, elevating a society girl to something grander.

Lawrence was the supreme portraitist of Regency Britain, president of the Royal Academy and a favorite of George IV. This painting stayed with the Conyngham family for a time, then passed through private collections for roughly a century and a half. In 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired it from a London dealer, the price was never disclosed, standard for private-treaty sales of this caliber.

A court painted into legitimacy, a daughter repackaged as a symbol of purity, and a masterpiece that finally entered a public museum after hiding in drawing rooms for generations. What do you think the Met actually paid for it?