Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by Sargent: Lantern Light at Dusk (1886)
Twilight in an English garden. Two little girls in white dresses stand among tall lilies, pink roses and carnations, lighting Chinese paper lanterns. The glow of the candles turns their faces and hands warm gold, while the garden around them fades into the cool blue-green of dusk. John Singer Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, painted in 1885–86 and now in Tate Britain, is one of the best-loved pictures in London, and one of the most patient: Sargent painted it a few minutes at a time, only when the light was exactly right.
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Artist: John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)
Date: 1885–1886
Medium: Oil on canvas, 174 × 153.7 cm
Collection: Tate Britain, London (Chantrey Bequest, 1887)
Painted at: Broadway, Worcestershire, in the Cotswolds
Where does the title come from?
The odd, singsong title comes from a popular song of the time, Joseph Mazzinghi's pastoral glee Ye Shepherds Tell Me, in which the goddess Flora wears a wreath of "carnation, lily, lily, rose". The line suited a picture made of flowers and children. The flowers are all there: white lilies rising above the girls' heads, roses at their sides, carnations among the grass.
Who are the girls?
The models were Dolly and Polly Barnard, the daughters of the illustrator Frederick Barnard, a friend of Sargent's. Dolly, on the left, was eleven; Polly, on the right, was seven. Sargent first planned to use Katherine Millet, the five-year-old daughter of the American painter Francis Davis Millet, but her dark hair did not suit the effect he wanted, and he chose the fair-haired Barnard sisters instead.
Painting a few minutes a day
In 1885 Sargent was staying with a group of American and English artists in the village of Broadway in the Cotswolds. He had seen Chinese lanterns hanging among trees and lilies on a boating trip on the Thames with the painter Edwin Austin Abbey, and decided to paint the effect in the open air. That meant waiting for dusk. Every evening, from September to November 1885, he set up his easel in the garden of Farnham House, posed the girls, and painted only during the few minutes when the fading daylight and the lantern light were in balance. When the season ended he put the canvas aside, then started again the following summer in the garden of Millet's new house nearby, finishing the canvas in October 1886. Along the way he cut about 60 centimetres off the left side to tighten the composition.
The result shows how much Sargent had learned from French Impressionism, and especially from his friend Claude Monet, whose own studies of changing light culminated in series like The Houses of Parliament, Sunset. Look at the faces of the girls: there is no black shadow anywhere, only warm orange light from below and cool blue light from the sky above.
How was it received?
Shown at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1887, the painting received a mixed reception. Some critics found its loose brushwork too "Frenchified" for English taste; the public loved it. The President of the Royal Academy, Frederic Leighton, encouraged its purchase for the nation with the funds of the Chantrey Bequest, and it became the first work by Sargent to enter a public collection. It helped make his name in Britain, where he became the most fashionable portrait painter of his age. Three decades later the same artist would paint a very different scene, the war picture Gassed.
Where can you see it?
The painting hangs in Tate Britain on Millbank, London, where entry to the collection is free. In the same museum you can see Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott, another late-Victorian favourite. For another painter who made light the subject of children's play, compare Sorolla's Children on the Beach.
See Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose framed on your wall: a museum-quality print, canvas or poster from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
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Watch the video essay (in Spanish) on @SapiensVerbum on YouTube.
Sources
Tate, collection record, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (N01615); Wikipedia, “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”.
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