Singer Sargent’s evocative canvas turns a sweet, ordinary scene into a symphony of shapes and colors.
John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, 1885–86, oil on canvas, 174 x 153.7 cm (Tate Britain, London). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
John Singer Sargent, Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose, 1885–86, oil on canvas, 174 x 153.7 cm (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, Tate Britain)
Shepherds tell me have you seen,
Have you seen my Flora pass this way?
A wreath around her head, around her head she wore,
Carnation, lily, lily, rose,…
The chorus of a popular song by composer Joseph Mazzinghi was the inspiration for the title of John Singer Sargent’s painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. In Sargent’s hands, however, the pastoral images of the song have been banished, replaced by an evocative twilight scene of children, flowers, and Chinese lanterns. The muted light and colors, unusual angles, and the lack of narrative content combine to create a beautifully rendered moment, capturing the fleeting atmosphere of dusk and the innocence of childhood.
John Singer Sargent, Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883–84, oil on canvas, 82-1/8 x 43-1/4 inches (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose was painted in the English village of Broadway. The artist had moved to London after leaving France due to the scandal caused by his painting Madame X, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1884. Sargent’s striking female portrait was the subject of enormous controversy due to the plunging neckline of her dress and the fact that originally one strap had been hanging off her shoulder (this was later repainted firmly in its correct place). Although the sitter, Virginie Gautreau, a fellow expatriate American who had married a French banker, was not explicitly identified, audiences recognized the likeness as well as her habit of using lavender dusting powder. Rumors of Gautreau’s infidelities were rampant, so the risqué portrait added fuel to the fire, for both artist and sitter.
For several years after his move to England, Sargent spent his summers in Broadway, a picturesque village in the Cotswolds, which was also the site of a thriving artist’s colony in the late 19th century. Both English and American artists and writers congregated there, and Sargent joined an expatriate community including such notables as Frank Millet, Edwin Austin Abbey and the writer Henry James. According to James in an article published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1889, “Broadway and much of the land about it are in short the perfection of the old English rural tradition,” and here Sargent found both acceptance and inspiration for his work.
Parish church, Broadway, seen from the Cotswold Way (photo: Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sargent got the idea for the painting in August of 1885 after seeing a group of children among flowers and Chinese lanterns hung among trees in the village of Pangbourne in Berkshire. He spent more than a year trying to bring his vision to fruition. In letters, he pointed out that he was hindered from completing the painting in September because it was the end of the flowering season. Taking no chances, when he returned to Broadway to finish the painting in the summer of 1886, he had a friend grow lilies in pots to extend his available time for working on the painting.
Left: John Singer Sargent, Lily, Study for “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose,” 1885–86, graphite, pen, and ink on off-white wove paper, 34.4 x 24.6 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); right: John Singer Sargent, Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose, detail, 1885–86, oil on canvas, 174 x 153.7 cm (Tate Britain)
In addition to the problem of maintaining blossoms, Sargent was plagued by other issues. His original intent for the composition was to use one younger child, but he was eventually forced to select little girls who were a bit older and able to pose as required. White dresses for the girls were specially designed. Most importantly, the painting was completed “en plein air” to get the correct effect of light, but given the fleeting nature of light at dusk, he could only paint for a few minutes each day.
John Singer Sargent, Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose, detail, 1885–86, oil on canvas, 174 x 153.7 cm (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, Tate Britain)
However, the effort that went into Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose proved worthwhile. The painting was well received by both audiences and critics when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887 and was immediately purchased for the British nation by the Chantrey Bequest, a fund established by sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey to acquire works of art made in England. The subtle effects of light illuminating the faces of the little girls, the subtly sketchy brushwork, the unusual angle looking down at the children (taken from the influence of Japanese prints), and the attention to capturing the momentary changes of twilight all speak to Sargent’s modernity.
John Singer Sargent, Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose, detail showing the colors of dusk, 1885–86, oil on canvas, 174 x 153.7 cm (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, Tate Britain)
Sargent’s painting is a combination of several radical ideas found in the art of the end of the 19th century. Like Impressionism, it captures a distinct moment. In an instant, the children could move, or the light change and the spell would be broken. It is worth pointing out that Sargent was friends with Claude Monet and had in fact been invited to exhibit with the Impressionist group, an honor he declined. The picture is also firmly associated with the Aesthetic Movement, with its insistence on beautiful subjects and a lack of narrative content. Like the song that inspired its title, the painting reminds the viewer of a simpler time, creating a quietly beautiful snapshot of a bygone era.
John Singer Sargent, Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose, 1885–86, oil on canvas, 174 x 153.7 cm (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, Tate Britain)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:05] The fading light of the sun is being replaced by the lanterns being held by these children. It is that moment at twilight when artificial light just begins to assert itself against the light of the day.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:19] It is a wonderful and haunting time of the day, and Sargent captured it in his painting “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose,” from 1885-86.
Dr. Zucker: [0:30] Yeah, that title is pretty poetic, and the repetition in the title really gives us a sense of the idea of repetition of form and light throughout this painting. Look at the way that the Japanese lanterns move from left to right across the middle of this canvas.
Dr. Harris: [0:45] Forming a curving arabesque across the center.
Dr. Zucker: [0:48] They’re almost like the notes that you would find in a musical score, and we do read across, but of course our eye also stops, because there’s so much that’s beautiful to look at here.
Dr. Harris: [0:58] All we have is this really lush, rich surface.
Dr. Zucker: [1:01] There’s nobody that moves paint across the surface of the canvas like Sargent. Look how he’s just moved that brush across the surface in rendering those roses, or the carnations down towards the bottom, or even the ridges of the lanterns themselves and the way in which those blue shadows play against the beautiful, warm illumination from within.
Dr. Harris: [1:21] It’s interesting, because the parts of a painting that you would expect to be illuminated are not. Everything is drenched in dusk. You look to the faces of the children for where they would be illuminated, where you might see the expression on a child’s face, but he hasn’t concentrated his attention there. His attention is dispersed across this decorative surface.
[1:44] The parts that are illuminated are these lanterns against these graying green forms of dusk.
Dr. Zucker: [1:51] Look at the way that the canvas is really flat, clearly the influence of Japanese prints, the way in which, for instance, the flowers are smallest at the feet of the children. Then as we move up to those large lilies, they rise. That’s directly in opposition to the way that paintings would normally be constructed. It has the effect of making the background come forward.
Dr. Harris: [2:11] There is a conflation of nature and childhood and innocence and all of those things coming together. It’s just lovely.
Dr. Zucker: [2:19] And so 19th century.
Dr. Harris: [2:21] We have a painting that lacks any kind of a real subject except for the quality of light and color harmonies, these greens and peaches and pinks and whites. We see this in British painting in the last half of the 19th century with artists like Albert Moore, where the subject of the painting is the color harmony, art for art’s sake.
Dr. Zucker: [2:42] This is well into this movement that we know as Aestheticism, which removes all of the literary, all of the weighty subjects of history, and really make the painting and the beauty of the painting its main focus.
Dr. Harris: [2:53] The formal qualities of the painting — shapes, patterns, colors — those are the things that become most important. We could think about artists, also, like Whistler. It’s easy to see how this becomes important for the beginnings of abstraction, looking at art not for what it’s representing, not for the objects it’s copying from the world, but for the things that art is made of itself.
Dr. Zucker: [3:17] Sargent actually painted this plein air, that is, he painted it in a garden. So he was also very interested in tonal accuracy and accuracy of form, even if in fact ultimately the painting is about painting.
[3:30] Apparently, this was a bit of a frustration. Painting outside with models is not an easy thing, especially when you’ve got children, and dusk is such a fleeting moment. One could imagine him in England in this garden, really trying to keep everybody’s attention, making sure that the weather is right, making sure that the light is just right, and trying to get all of this down.
Dr. Harris: [3:49] The children are really concentrating on the lighting of their lanterns.
Dr. Zucker: [3:54] Their thoughtfulness draws us in and allows us to linger over all of the beautiful, visual, lushness that the artist has given us.
[4:03] [music]
