John Singer Sargent: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, Pt. 2

"Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose" by John Singer Sargent

"The first step that John Singer Sargent took in preparing for "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" was to take as his model Mrs. Millet's small daughter, aged five, covering her dark hair with a fair golden wig and sketching her in the act of lighting a Chinese lantern at the moment when the sun had set and a flush still hung in the sky. While engaged on the sketch he saw the two Barnard children, then aged seven and eleven, who, with their parents, were living in a house nearby. They were of a more suitable age, and their hair was the exact colour Sargent wanted. He asked Mrs. Barnard to let the children pose.

Never for any picture did he do so many studies and sketches. He would hang about like a snapshot photographer to catch the children in attitudes helpful to his main purpose. 'Stop as you are,' he would suddenly cry as the children were at play, 'don't move! I must make a sketch of you,' and there and then he would fly off to return in a moment with easel, canvas and paintbox.

Sir Edmund Gosse wrote: 

'The progress of the picture when once it began to advance, was a matter of excited interest to the whole of our little artist colony. Everything used to be placed in readiness, the easel, the canvas, the flowers, the demure little girls in their white dresses, before we began our daily afternoon lawn tennis, in which Sargent took his share. But at the exact moment, which of course came a minute or two earlier each evening, the game was stopped, and the painter was accompanied to the scene of his labours. Instantly, he took up his place at a distance from the canvas, and at a certain notation of the light ran forward over the lawn with the action of a wagtail, planting at the same time rapid dabs of paint on the picture, and then retiring again, only with equal suddenness to repeat the wagtail action. All this occupied but two or three minutes, the light rapidly declining, and then while he left the young ladies to removed his machinery, Sargent would join us again, so long as the twilight permitted, in a last turn at lawn tennis.'

These brief sessions every evening went on from August till the beginning of November."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)