Since 1981, Judith Martin -known as the Washington Post's “Miss Manners”-has traveled to Venice for extended stays. Martin sat for this portrait in the historic Palazzo Albrizzi. Victor Edelstein, a former fashion designer, selected the costume from Martin's wardrobe. Martin is shown with books that she authored; and the model of the vaporetto was made by a well-known Venetian craftsman.
Martin chafes at being dismissed as a “woman's writer.” She has pointed out the valuable contributions she has made to journalism while reporting on the “woman's sphere,” including reporting on the women's rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, “when other parts of the paper mentioned it rarefy and then only as a joke.” She asked in 2014, “Who could ever have been so blind and bigoted as to believe that only women attended parties, had children, wore clothes, lived in homes and ate food?”
The painting features Judith Martin's books in front of a model of a Venetian water bus.
Horizontally we see her book No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice, leaning on which is Miss Manners Minds Your Business which she wrote with her husband Nicholas Ivor Martin.
Victor Edelstein 2008
In the National Portrait Gallery Judith Martin hangs across the door from fellow advise columnist Ann Landers.
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