In this nearly full-length portrait, Mary Frick Jacobs (1848–1936) gazes directly at the viewer. Dressed in a fashionable white gown for the opera, she is otherwise simply adorned, wearing a ring and gold bracelet and holding her opera glasses. Jacobs, one of the founding donors of the Baltimore Museum of Art and whose name these European galleries bear, posed twice for Alexandre Cabanel in his studio in Paris, France, to complete this work. Like many elite American art collectors who traveled to Paris in the late 19th century , Jacobs and her first husband, Robert Garrett (1847–1896)—whose fortune came from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad—were keen to have their likenesses painted by this celebrated French artist. Cabanel’s fluid brushwork captures the elegance and confidence of the sitter.