Executed during the years Millet divided his time between America and England, the artist painted Sadie, the nineteen-year-old daughter of prominent St. Louis industrialist William H. Waters, before she left to study art in France. Although Millet concentrated on genre scenes at this time, he was likely encouraged to paint Sadie because she possessed the open, rather dreamy look of the models he often used, as well as because of the prominence of her family (her father founded the Waters-Pierce Oil Company with Henry Clay Pierce, which eventually became part of the famed Standard Oil Trust).

Noted critic Marianna Van Rensselaer singled out the present work in her review of the National Academy's 1889 annual exhibition, describing Millet's submission as "a delicate and refined figure of a charming maiden in a lavender gown." 1 In addition to capturing the pensive, rather faraway expression on Sadie’s youthful face, Millet depicts her costume in meticulous detail. Here, the rich texture and soft folds of the pale lavender-grey fabric contrast with the lighter floral print of the layer below, reflecting and absorbing light in a display of painterly skill. Though small, the exquisitely detailed fresh rose in Sadie’s hand gives emphasis to the colors inher face, creating a vibrant and luminous composition from the basic elements of a society portrait.

Soon after the present portrait was painted, Sadie Waters left to study painting in Paris. She apparently resided there for most of her remaining years, achieving the notable success of an honorable mention at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle for one of her miniatures. Sadly, she experienced what must certainly have been the high point of her career in the same year that she died, prematurely, at the age of 30.

Millet, a Harvard University graduate who studied at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Art, traveled the world as a war correspondent and illustrator. In 1884, he visited the art colony at Broadway, Worcestershire, England, and soon purchased a house and studio in the village. For many years thereafter, he divided his time between England and his native United States, meeting an untimely death as a passenger on the ill-fated Titanic crossing of 1912.