London, Feb. 3 -- Portraiture is never neutral. Whether painted or photographed, it encases a visible likeness within a frame for public view, a process shaped by what is shown, what is withheld, and what is permitted to stand in for a life.

Portrait galleries, therefore, offer more than faces and names. They preserve a record of how societies have chosen to frame women across time, what has been emphasised, what softened, and what quietly left out.

At London's National Portrait Gallery, this dynamic becomes especially pronounced. Portraiture here is not merely about likeness, but about calculation: how a woman was seen by her society, how she may have understood herself, and how she chose - or was compelled - to be portrayed by others. ...