This oil painting is called Vanity. It was painted by Frank Cadogan Cowper in the Pre-Raphaelite style in 1907. As a Pre-Raphaelite paining, the colors are quite bold, bright, dramatic. The painting itself looks highly realistic, another Pre-Raphaelite feature. Along with this, the painting is of a beautiful woman with pale skin, which was a common theme for Pre-Raphaelites to paint.

In this painting, the woman’s eyes are important to examine. For instance, the woman is shifting her eyes toward the hand mirror in her left hand. As she glances at her reflection in the mirror, she appears very well-pleased with herself and captivated by her own beauty. The sneaky aspect of her side-glance also insinuates how the woman can’t take her eyes off of herself, not even for a moment. She has to stop whatever she’s doing in order to steal a glance at herself. This self-obsession relates to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret because Lady Audley is also obsessed with her beauty. This obsession is observed by the Pre-Raphaelite painter who painted Lady Audley’s portrait. The narrator notes that “No one but a Pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of that delicate face as to give a lurid lightness to the blonde complexion, and a strange, sinister light to the deep, blue eyes. No one but a Pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait” (107). In this analysis, the narrator discloses how the painter made Lady Audley’s eyes appear “sinister” and that her mouth added a “hard and almost wicked look” to her expression. At this point in the novel, this devious expression contrasts with what we’ve read about of Lady Audley. She is known to be well-liked, gentle, and childlike, but this interpretation suggests otherwise. It makes the reader doubt Lady Audley authenticity.

But just as the reader starts to doubt Lady Audley’s trustworthiness, the narrator asserts that “I suppose the painter had copied quaint medieval monstrosities until his brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, had something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend” (107). Here, the narrator believes that the painter must’ve had a skewed perspective of Lady Audley to paint her in such a mischievous way. From the narrator’s view in this moment, we are meant to distrust the painter’s perspective of Lady Audley. But as we are given clues to and eventually become privy to, Lady Audley’s secret, we realize that the painter had her figured out all along. He painted her accurately, as Lady Audley did have sinister intentions by trying to murder George and deceive Sir Michael.

This aspect of the painter being able to see through Lady Audley’s mask is interesting because it claims that painters can see people for who they really are. I, myself, have had a similar experience when I was having my portrait drawn in a caricature style at my high school senior night. When it was my turn to have my portrait drawn, I felt nervous as everyone was watching me and the artist. I thought that, despite feeling tense on the inside, no one would notice this. However, when my portrait was finished, I saw how anxious I looked in the drawing. The artist had saw underneath my façade and observed how uneasy I had felt while getting my portrait done. This experience and my reading of Lady Audley’s Secret have reinforced the idea for me that many painters really can see what’s going on underneath the surface of the models they paint.

To sum, going back to Cowper’s Vanity, it’s intriguing to see the similarities between Lady Audley and the women in Vanity. Both of these women are beautiful, but this doesn’t automatically make them a good person. I think it’s easy to instantly trust people who are beautiful because, as humans, beauty appeals to us. But appearances are deceiving and just because someone is attractive on the outside, doesn’t mean they’re a kind person on the inside. In fact, the woman in Vanity, as the title implies, seems completely self-obsessed and conceited. And as for Lady Audley, in her portrait painting, she appears to be a wicked fiend, which as we find out, is true of her character after all. 

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth., and Natalie M. Houston. Lady Audley’s Secret. Broadview Literary

Texts, 2003.

RA Collections Team. “Why Is It Called Vanity?” How to Read It: Frank Cadogan Cowper’s

Vanity. RA 250, 28 Feb. 2018, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/how-to-read-it-frank-cadogan-cowper-vanity.