This portrait was commissioned in 1913 on the occasion of James's seventieth birthday by a group of 269 subscribers organised by Edith Wharton, although Sargent, a friend of James, eventually waived his fee. James pronounced the portrait to be 'a living breathing likeness and a masterpiece of painting'. This reproduction is apparently one of 50 copies produced. The original resides in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 1767), and was the subject of an attack by a militant suffragette in May 1914 - 'the assailant being an elderly woman of distinctly peaceable appearance' (The Times, 5 May 1914).