The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit
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''The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit'' (originally titled ''Portraits d'enfants'')Gallati, p. 79 is a painting by
John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...
. The painting depicts four young girls, the daughters of Edward Darley Boit, in their family's Paris apartment. It was painted in 1882 and is now exhibited in the new Art of the
Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...
Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting hangs between the two tall blue-and-white Japanese vases depicted in the work; they were donated by the heirs of the Boit family. It has been described as "Arguably the most psychologically compelling painting of Sargent's career".Gallati, p. 81 Though the painting's unusual composition was noted from its earliest viewings, initially its subject was interpreted simply as that of girls at play, but it has subsequently been viewed in more abstract terms, reflecting Freudian analysis and a greater interest in the ambiguities of adolescence. Edward Boit was the son-in-law of
John Perkins Cushing John Perkins Cushing (April 22, 1787 – April 12, 1862), called "Ku-Shing" by the Chinese, was a wealthy American sea merchant, opium smuggler, and philanthropist. His sixty-foot pilot schooner, the ''Sylph'', won the first recorded American yac ...
and a friend of Sargent's. Boit was an "American cosmopolite" and a minor painter.Gallati, p. 81 His wife and the mother of his five children was Mary Louisa Cushing, known as "Isa". Their four daughters were Florence, Jane, Mary Louisa and Julia.


Composition

It is not certain whether ''The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit'' was commissioned by Boit or painted at Sargent's suggestion.Killmurray, Ormond, p. 98 Set in what is thought to be the foyer of Boit's Paris apartment,Gallati, p. 81 its dark interior space is reminiscent of those Sargent had recently painted in Venice. The composition was unusual for a group portrait, both for the varying degrees of prominence given to the figures—conventional group portraiture called for an arrangement in which the subjects were portrayed as equally important—and for the square shape of the canvas. The dimensions may owe something to the influence of
Diego Velázquez Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...
's '' Las Meninas'', which Sargent had copied, and which presages the geometric format and broad, deep spaces of Sargent's painting.Prettejohn, p. 23 When the painting was first exhibited, contemporary critics, including
Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
, wrote of Sargent's debt to Velázquez. Art historian Barbara Gallati notes that the English translation of ''Las Meninas'', "Maids-in-Waiting", is an apt description for the activity of the Boit children.Gallati, p. 83
Carolus-Duran Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran (Lille 4 July 1837 – 17 February 1917 Paris), was a French painter and art instructor. He is noted for his stylish depictions of members of high society in Third Republic France. Biograph ...
, Sargent's teacher, had encouraged his students to study the work of Velázquez. The relationship between the works is considered so significant that the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) loaned ''The Daughters'' to the
Museo del Prado The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...
in 2010, so that the paintings could be exhibited together for the first time. The brushwork of several passages has been seen as deriving from
Frans Hals Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...
, and nearly contemporaneous works that have been cited for their similarities are ''
Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children Madame may refer to: * Madam, civility title or form of address for women, derived from the French * Madam (prostitution), a term for a woman who is engaged in the business of procuring prostitutes, usually the manager of a brothel * ''Madame'' ( ...
'' by
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...
and, especially for its psychological complexity, '' The Bellelli Family'' by
Edgar Degas Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...
. Dressed in white pinafores, the children are arranged so that the youngest, four-year-old Julia, sits on the floor, eight-year-old Mary Louisa stands at left, and the two oldest, Jane, aged twelve, and Florence, fourteen, stand in the background, partially obscured by shadow. In very nearly hiding one of the girl's faces and subjugating the characterization of individuals to more formal compositional considerations, ''The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit'' is as much about the subject of childhood as it is an example of portraiture.


Interpretation

When the painting was first exhibited in Paris in 1882 and 1883, critics were struck by the oddness of the composition and "wooden forms" of the figures.Prettejohn, p. 23 In 1887, Henry James described the painting as representing a "happy play-world ... of charming children;" his uncomplicated reading went largely unchallenged for nearly a century. Much modern criticism has interpreted unsettling qualities in the painting, seen as both beautifully painted and psychologically unnerving, in which the girls appear to be seen at successive phases of childhood, retreating into alienation and a loss of innocence as they grow older.Prettejohn, p. 23 The sense of autonomy among the girls and the vitality of Sargent's paint has often made viewers feel as if by looking at the portrait, they have interrupted the children, who glance up in response. While today's audiences have sometimes assumed that the girls are engaged in some sort of clandestine activity, in Sargent's day the most frequent notion was that they had simply been playing. The pinafores were certainly appropriate garments for girls at play, and the majority of writers who discussed the painting when it was first displayed characterized it as an image of children participating in or having just finished a game. Gallati has suggested that the placement of the two oldest girls, at the edge of a darkened and ambiguous entryway, is symbolic of their maturation into an unknown future.Gallati, p. 83 Several art historians have interpreted the painting as revealing Sargent's psychosexual thoughts.Gallati, p. 82. David Lubin finds sexual connotations in the name "Boit," as ''boîte'' is French for "box", the boxy shape of the canvas, and the womblike interior space the girls inhabit. In the succeeding years, none of the girls would marry, and the two oldest suffered emotional disturbances in maturity. In 1919, the four sisters gave the painting to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in memory of their father. Author Bill Brown has commented on what he calls the "uncanny qualities" of the depiction of the girls and the vases, which he asserts promote "an indeterminate ontology ecause ofthe inability to distinguish between the animate and the inanimate." Brown claims that the painting offers a ''portrait'' of vases and a ''
still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...
'' of the girls, and that this "discloses a dialectic of person and thing."Brown, Bill.''A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature'', Chicago University Press, p.260


Notes


References

* Brown, Bill. ''A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature'', Chicago University Press, * Gallati, Barbara Dayer. ''Great Expectations: John Singer Sargent Painting Children'', Bulfinch 2004 * Kilmurray, Elizabeth, Ormond, Richard. ''John Singer Sargent''. Tate Gallery Publishing Ltd, 1999. * Marshall, Megan. "Model Children: The story of John Singer Sargent's painting of a family of enigmatic girls", ''The New York Times Book Review'' (December 13, 2009), p. 22 * Prettejohn, Elizabeth. "Interpreting Sargent". Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998. * Tinterow, Gary, Lacambre, Geneviève. ''Manet/Velazquéz: The French Taste for Spanish Painting''. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2003.


External links


Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museo Nacional del Prado, ''Invited work: The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, Sargent''



Japanese vases, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston


{{DEFAULTSORT:Daughters of Edward Darley Bolt, The 1882 paintings 19th-century portraits Group portraits by American artists Paintings by John Singer Sargent Paintings of children Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Portraits of women