“The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” by John Singer Sargent
“...when was the pinafore ever painted with that power and made so poetic?”
--Henry James
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. 1882. The Museum of Fine Arts. Boston.
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Those girls...
We care about them instinctively and immediately...but, why? They are clearly children of the Gilded Age seen amidst the quiet rooms and hushed voices of the very rich. They are dressed properly in their “play” pinafores to protect their fine clothes. They appear to be safe and well cared for, indeed fortunate...and yet....there is a locus of uncertainty about them in this painting that evokes in us some vague concern for their well being...
Sargent has placed the youngest daughter, Julia, age 4 in the foreground on a lovely but surely expensive carpet (island?) with her baby doll. Behind her, Mary Louisa stands with all the determination and certainty that an 8 year old girl possesses. Behind her in a shadowed hallway stands the oldest, Florence, 14 (leaning against a tall vase) and Jane, 12. Could the artist be painting the threshold of complexity and approaching loss of innocence that is inexorably going to be a part of adulthood, despite the cushion that their wealth provides to them?
The Boit family was part of a community of wealthy American expatriates living in elegantly furnished Paris apartments in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Edward Boit was a minor artist who married the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. The Boits, Sargent and the writer Henry James were friends who shared a preference for life in Europe rather than the United States. Details are not known, but either Edward Boit commissioned this picture as a group portrait of his daughters or Sargent had conceived the project himself and suggested it to Boit.
While the painting was greeted at the Paris Salon as an oddity, James wrote perceptively about “...the sense it gives us of assimilated secrets and instinct and knowledge playing together...” It was a departure from conventional ideas about portraiture and became more of a genre scene, an interior that included four children. Interestingly, a few years earlier Edgar Degas was introducing the same asymmetry into his compositions -- family members disconnected from one another, emotional distance, a sense of unease in their calm lives...
Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Family, 1858-67, Musee d’Orsay, Paris
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A visitor to the MFA today would see Sargent’s Daughters exhibited between the now immortalized vases
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As you can immediately see the Japanese vases (donated to the museum by the Boit daughters along with the painting) have a more complicated design than what Sargent included in his work. He probably did not want the design to distract the viewer’s attention from his canvas. The vases Sargent did render work beautifully for this painting,-- a lovely shine is captured by Sargent’s brush as is the graceful arch of Florence’s back against the smooth curve of the porcelain.
The pinafores give Sargent the opportunity to show off his virtuosity in painting nuances in white and it one of the occasions of sheer joy for viewers to study. Closely seen, these aprons softly glow...
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Sargent often painted women of that era in varying tones of white, such as this portrait of Lady Agnew and many others.
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Today it is popularly believed that “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” was strongly “informed” by Diego Velazquez’s Baroque masterpiece “Las Meninas.”
Las Meninas. 1656. Museo Nacional Del Prado. Madrid
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Sargent had traveled to the Prado in the fall of 1879 and copied Las Meninas (the Maidens), which shows us the young Infanta (princess) Margarita, her maid, tutors and playthings, as well as her parents, King Philip IV and queen Mariana of Austria, and the painter himself. This work has its own tantalizing mysteries. Velazquez is shown painting the scene and yet he is on the other side of the canvas and part of the scene. The king and queen appear as a reflection in a mirror in the recesses of the hall (just as Sargent has painted a mirror over a mantle and fireplace in the background of his picture). Is everyone looking at the royal couple and are they supposed to be passing through Velazquez’ workspace? As we view this picture, is the girl on the Infanta’s right starting to curtsy? Who is the courtier seen leaving in the background and why is he there?
In 2010 the MFA sent The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit to Madrid, to be exhibited for the first time in the Prado in close proximity to Las Meninas. This remarkable event is seen here
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Seen together at that exhibit, it must have forced viewers to look entirely anew at both familiar paintings in each other’s context. We tend to group paintings in terms of their eras and how well they express the art of their time. Now we are asked to wonder yet again about timelessness in art, the carrying forward of themes and meanings. These happenstances ask us to be open to new possibilities and give us ever more wonder at such riches as art affords us....
= new reply since forum marked as read
I know nothing about visual arts except that which moves me personally. What there is to be learned about the topic must come from a passion for such things. It is some people's ability to relate that passion that allows the passion to spread.
One must never apologize for such a thing. Instead, one should celebrate it.
I miss your weekly Friday posts. And never, ever apologize for them again.
My best to you for consistently raising things here above the fray.
Because you are.
I wish I could do the same for my passion, classical music and opera, an atheist who likes religious music, especially Bach. That's quite a bit more difficult on a Net forum.
As always.
I was trained in oils and remember being fascinated with that painting, amazed at the pinafores. I tried so hard to copy how he did it and got close but not close enough.
I didn't give a lot of though to the composition and the feelings evoked (as you have done), I do remember being oddly drawn to how he positioned the girls and the looks on their faces.
It's really neat to see the Sargent and Degas together like that, really shows the similarities (although I prefer the Sargent). I've never seen that pic before.
Where is it? In the dark hallway?
I'll have to look again.
Whoops, I just looked again and saw it this time. Sorry about that. 
Glad I dodged that one. At my age, I am always grateful to learn I am not seeing things that don't exist.
I think the youngest is pretty much the happiest looking. I note that Sargent has brightly lit her and then as the girls get older they are further back with the oldest two in the shadows. But given the time this was painted it is hard to give our modern day psychological interpretation with certainty of the artist's intent. 
(it won't receive the gift, however, until the unimaginable day Ms Streisand passes on)
<...> Mrs. Cazalet and Her Children Edward and Victor is society portrait commissioned by the family to compliment an existing portrait of Mrs. Cazalet’s husband. The painting was displayed at the Cazalet home in Fairlawne in Kent and was purchased by Ms. Streisand in 2002. The painting is over 8-feet-tall, and will be officially donated to the museum after her death.
Ms. Streisand served on LACMA’s board from 2007 to 2014, and is an avid collector of American art, which she began collecting after a visit to the White House following the 1992 Presidential Inauguration of Bill Clinton.
“It was a time of special optimism and I wanted to grace my walls with those painters America had given to the world,” she told the L.A. Times. <...> New York Observer
I was an art major and took art history, and still never saw any of Sargent's work until you posted this. I love the Boit girls painting and I think it is one of the best I've seen from his period. I can't imagine why it was not even included in my massive art history book.
I wish I was close enough to visit the museum. I'll have to enjoy it vicariously through your posts.
His subjects are always so alive.
Thank you for your enlightening art history lessons. 
But I never really looked at it this closely before. The placement of the figures is disconcerting once you start to analyze it. I learn so much from your art history posts. Thank you so much.
Wonderful presentation.
I especially appreciate the discussion of the influences of one period on a later period and of earlier artists on later artists. Of course this is true in all art but the way you present it is so clear..another door being opened.
And you now have me interested in white...
Then there is the counterpoint in 'Las Meninas.' A reminder, in a way, of your last gift to us.
And, I HOPE this summer to take in a Red Sox game,, a visit to Fenway being on my bucket list. And of course if I make it.... a stop at the MFA is now on the books.
Thank you again,
Oh, and btw, you can also see Slave Ship by Turner there...the MFA is a great museum. Sargent designed its ceiling
people who think art was just started oh, maybe in the beginning of the 20th century. I think they are just lazy and can't/won't do any deeper thinking than modernism. You can't even talk to them about it. We've got plenty of them right here in the People's Republic of New Haven and some of them are around the Yale School of Art....
thanks for that info...
my daughter who lives in the Boston suburbs. We saw the Goya exhibit and took my granddaughter who loved the duchess in her black lace. Thank god I have one grandchild who likes to go to art museums...she even listened to her old grandma give her a brief tutorial on Goya on the ride in...
