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Drop to your KNEES
Drop to your Knees is a new periodic column where readers share their personal relationships
with works of art that have made an impact in their lives. If you would like to submit an idea
for this column, please contact us.
John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.
A painting which I knew only from photographs in books is The Daughters of
Edward Darley Boit by John Singer Sargent. I knew it was a large painting, and I
was prepared to be impressed. What I was not prepared for was my reaction,
which was that I burst into tears. Literally, tears squirted out of my eyes and I was
stopped dead for some seconds while I tried to recover myself. Since that struck-by-
lightning moment in a museum, I’ve tried to figure out what it is about the painting
that is so powerful. I am not a person who cries easily and it was not the reaction I
would have chosen for myself, surrounded as I was by culture mavens in their
designer suits and fabulous shoes and precision haircuts. My modus operandi is
to be silent and noncommital, a poker face - keep it all inside, the better to process
it later.
I came around a corner and there it was, more than 7 feet by 7 feet of oil on
canvas, a view of four sisters, the daughters of Edward Darley Boit who was a
friend of Sargent and a painter himself. It was painted in 1882 in the Boit’s
apartment in Paris when Sargent was just 26 years old.
The scene is serenely domestic, an interior, a rug, two vases and four girls, the
two older girls in the doorway of a dimly lit room toward the back of the painting
and the two younger girls in the lighter room toward the front, the baby in the
center foreground, somber and beautiful. In the museum, the painting is mounted
very low so that the girls seem to be just ahead of the viewer on the floor. We
could almost step into the room with them.
The oldest girl (14 at the time of the painting), is leaning against one of a pair of
Japanese vases. The vase is taller than she is, a lovely blue on white vessel, a
fixture in the household. The small of her back rests on an outward curve of the
vase, her shoulders and neck on an inward curve, and she is turned away from us,
in profile and in shadow, dressed in black with a white pinafore. We can’t know
what is inside her anymore than we can know what might be inside the vase. She
is facing toward her next sister (age 12) who is looking out, but whose expression
reveals no emotion. Also dressed in black with a white pinafore, the second
daughter reinforces the reticent position of her sister. The third girl (age 8) stands
boldly in the light, copper curls and facial expression giving off energy, although
her hands are hidden behind her back. The youngest girl (age 4) sits on a large
simply-patterned rug, gazing directly at us, holding a baby doll. The doll is a
masterpiece of impressionism, a few swirls of pink and white evoking a face and
a dress. This is a bold and informal portrait, children caught in a moment in their
home, not sitting primly for the artist, and not gathered into an orderly cluster, but
scattered and individual in the space.
The historical record says that the two older girls were isolated and mentally ill as
adults. None of the girls ever married, and the painting was donated by the four
sisters to the Boston museum in 1919, I suppose because there were no children
or grandchildren who might inherit it and love it.
I didn’t know any of these sad facts before seeing the painting in person. I knew I
loved Sargent’s paintings, starting with the little beauty tucked away in the
basement of the Art Institute in Chicago, “Mrs. George Swinton,”1897 – a
gorgeous woman, dressed in white which gave JSS the chance to show off his
way with light, standing next to a pink chair. When I go to a new city, a top
priority for me is finding the art museum. It all started back in 1965 when my
friend Jimmy Sullivan and I skipped classes at Dominican High School and took
the train to Chicago. Our outrageous behavior there consisted of looking at
paintings all day and adopting fake English accents (he – Geoffrey, me –
Millicent). Seeing “American Gothic” and Seurat’s dotty picnic and Picasso’s blue
man with guitar gave me a taste for painting that has grown more intense with
every passing year.
But nothing I’ve seen in countless museums ever hit me the way Sargent’s portrait
of the Boit sisters did. I have since read that this painting hits many people
viscerally, but why? Why does it make us weep?
Was there some indefinable aspect to the two older girls that was perceptible to
Sargent when he painted them? Did he know there was something walled off,
guarded, inapproachable? Is that why they are in shadow in the painting? Is the
tall vase a stand-in for the husband against whom the oldest girl would never lean?
Is the little pink doll of the youngest sister representative of all the children these
four girls would never have? And how could Sargent possibly have seen all this
before the fact?
Sargent’s childhood friend, Violet Paget, writing under the pen name Vernon Lee,
said of JSS, “That quite unverbal, intuitive imagination of his had fastened on the
facial forms, the pose and gesture, …which revealed the man or woman’s
character and life. To this kind of imagination I would apply Ruskin’s adjective
penetrative, for Sargent’s art does penetrate to the innermost suggestion of
everything he painted…”
This is what it comes down to for me: Sargent looked so hard and saw so clearly
that he conveyed a kind of truth. Sometimes the truth was simple and perfect (Mrs.
Swinton), sometimes the truth was snaggle-toothed and wearing horn rim glasses
(his painting of Violet Paget), and sometimes the truth was a tangle of
sensuousness, tenderness, darkness, and pain (the Boit girls). I think it is the truth,
the reality conveyed, that makes us gasp.
Laura Baldus Murphy is an amateur photographer and writer and 4th generation
Milwaukeean.
Drop to your Knees is a new periodic column where readers share their personal relationships
with works of art that have made an impact in their lives. If you would like to submit an idea
for this column, please contact us.
John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.
A painting which I knew only from photographs in books is The Daughters of
Edward Darley Boit by John Singer Sargent. I knew it was a large painting, and I
was prepared to be impressed. What I was not prepared for was my reaction,
which was that I burst into tears. Literally, tears squirted out of my eyes and I was
stopped dead for some seconds while I tried to recover myself. Since that struck-by-
lightning moment in a museum, I’ve tried to figure out what it is about the painting
that is so powerful. I am not a person who cries easily and it was not the reaction I
would have chosen for myself, surrounded as I was by culture mavens in their
designer suits and fabulous shoes and precision haircuts. My modus operandi is
to be silent and noncommital, a poker face - keep it all inside, the better to process
it later.
I came around a corner and there it was, more than 7 feet by 7 feet of oil on
canvas, a view of four sisters, the daughters of Edward Darley Boit who was a
friend of Sargent and a painter himself. It was painted in 1882 in the Boit’s
apartment in Paris when Sargent was just 26 years old.
The scene is serenely domestic, an interior, a rug, two vases and four girls, the
two older girls in the doorway of a dimly lit room toward the back of the painting
and the two younger girls in the lighter room toward the front, the baby in the
center foreground, somber and beautiful. In the museum, the painting is mounted
very low so that the girls seem to be just ahead of the viewer on the floor. We
could almost step into the room with them.
The oldest girl (14 at the time of the painting), is leaning against one of a pair of
Japanese vases. The vase is taller than she is, a lovely blue on white vessel, a
fixture in the household. The small of her back rests on an outward curve of the
vase, her shoulders and neck on an inward curve, and she is turned away from us,
in profile and in shadow, dressed in black with a white pinafore. We can’t know
what is inside her anymore than we can know what might be inside the vase. She
is facing toward her next sister (age 12) who is looking out, but whose expression
reveals no emotion. Also dressed in black with a white pinafore, the second
daughter reinforces the reticent position of her sister. The third girl (age 8) stands
boldly in the light, copper curls and facial expression giving off energy, although
her hands are hidden behind her back. The youngest girl (age 4) sits on a large
simply-patterned rug, gazing directly at us, holding a baby doll. The doll is a
masterpiece of impressionism, a few swirls of pink and white evoking a face and
a dress. This is a bold and informal portrait, children caught in a moment in their
home, not sitting primly for the artist, and not gathered into an orderly cluster, but
scattered and individual in the space.
The historical record says that the two older girls were isolated and mentally ill as
adults. None of the girls ever married, and the painting was donated by the four
sisters to the Boston museum in 1919, I suppose because there were no children
or grandchildren who might inherit it and love it.
I didn’t know any of these sad facts before seeing the painting in person. I knew I
loved Sargent’s paintings, starting with the little beauty tucked away in the
basement of the Art Institute in Chicago, “Mrs. George Swinton,”1897 – a
gorgeous woman, dressed in white which gave JSS the chance to show off his
way with light, standing next to a pink chair. When I go to a new city, a top
priority for me is finding the art museum. It all started back in 1965 when my
friend Jimmy Sullivan and I skipped classes at Dominican High School and took
the train to Chicago. Our outrageous behavior there consisted of looking at
paintings all day and adopting fake English accents (he – Geoffrey, me –
Millicent). Seeing “American Gothic” and Seurat’s dotty picnic and Picasso’s blue
man with guitar gave me a taste for painting that has grown more intense with
every passing year.
But nothing I’ve seen in countless museums ever hit me the way Sargent’s portrait
of the Boit sisters did. I have since read that this painting hits many people
viscerally, but why? Why does it make us weep?
Was there some indefinable aspect to the two older girls that was perceptible to
Sargent when he painted them? Did he know there was something walled off,
guarded, inapproachable? Is that why they are in shadow in the painting? Is the
tall vase a stand-in for the husband against whom the oldest girl would never lean?
Is the little pink doll of the youngest sister representative of all the children these
four girls would never have? And how could Sargent possibly have seen all this
before the fact?
Sargent’s childhood friend, Violet Paget, writing under the pen name Vernon Lee,
said of JSS, “That quite unverbal, intuitive imagination of his had fastened on the
facial forms, the pose and gesture, …which revealed the man or woman’s
character and life. To this kind of imagination I would apply Ruskin’s adjective
penetrative, for Sargent’s art does penetrate to the innermost suggestion of
everything he painted…”
This is what it comes down to for me: Sargent looked so hard and saw so clearly
that he conveyed a kind of truth. Sometimes the truth was simple and perfect (Mrs.
Swinton), sometimes the truth was snaggle-toothed and wearing horn rim glasses
(his painting of Violet Paget), and sometimes the truth was a tangle of
sensuousness, tenderness, darkness, and pain (the Boit girls). I think it is the truth,
the reality conveyed, that makes us gasp.
Laura Baldus Murphy is an amateur photographer and writer and 4th generation
Milwaukeean.
| Copyright 2008 Art History Chicks LLC |
| John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925), The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882. Oil on canvas. 87 3/8 x 87 5/8 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
| Detail. |
| John Singer Sargent, Mrs. George Swinton (Elizabeth Ebsworth), 1897. Oil on canvas, 90 3/4 x 48 3/4 in. Wirt D. Walker Collection, Art Institute of Chicago. |