When The Portrait of a Lady was published, James was a well-known and respected author whose story Daisy Miller was enjoying great popularity. The Portrait of a Lady was widely reviewed, and most reviews, including those in the leading American publications, were positive.

Horace E. Scudder reviewed The Portrait of a Lady for Atlantic, in which the novel was serialized before its book publication. Scudder's review focuses almost exclusively on what he calls the story's "consistency," by which he means that the novel's "characters, the situations, the incidents, are all true to the law of their own being." Scudder's single complaint is that he does not like the novel's ending. Simply put, he objects to James's sending Isabel back to Gilbert. Isabel deserves better than this, Scudder insists, and when one reads of her return to the dastardly Gilbert, "one's indignation is moved."

An anonymous review...