The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit
JOHN SINGER SARGENT
JOHN SINGER SARGENT, 1882. OIL ON CANVAS.
Not as much a portrait of girls as a portrait of childhood, Sargent’s most psychologically compelling work moves between beautiful and unnerving with each view. The four sisters are placed in their Parisian front room, ordered by age, with the youngest at the front and the oldest retreating into the shadows, a dark passageway behind her. The girls are wooden in their poses, so much so that the work has been called a still life, while the scenery, particularly the large Japanese vases, seem alive and dynamic. The work is temporal, time unfolds away from us as the children grow up and are moved away from the clarity of innocence into the dark unknowing of adolescence.