John Singer Sargent: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, Pt. 3

"Garden Study of the Vickers Children"
by John Singer Sargent

"The months flew past as John Singer Sargent painted 'Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose' and the evenings grew more chilly. He would dress the children in white sweaters which came down to their ankles, over which he pulled the dresses that appear in the picture. He himself would be muffled up like an Arctic explorer. At the same time the roses gradually faced and died, and artificial substitutes were then fixed to the withered bushes. In November, 1885, the unfinished picture was stored in the Millets' barn. When in 1886 the Barnard children returned to Broadway the sittings were resumed. 

One of the difficulties was the provision of the necessary flowers. When the Millets moved into Russell House a flower bed was cut in the garden and then the countryside had to be ransacked for roses, carnations, and lilies. Sargent, chancing on half an acre of roses in full bloom in a nursery garden said to the proprietor: 'I'll take them all. Dig them up and send them along this afternoon.' Sargent left no stone unturned, he suffered no obstacle to bar his passage where his art was concerned. When abroad in the same spirit he would cross a glacier, skirt the edge of a chasm or climb a precipice to gain the visual vantage. 

The unfinished picture had not been named, but one evening while Sargent was at his easel in the garden, a visitor asked what he intended to call it. Sargent happened to be humming the words of a song which they had been singing the previous evening, 'Have you seen my Flora pass this way.' One line of it was 'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' and that line answered the question.

'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' was first exhibited in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition of 1887, to a fiercely divided critical reception. A review of the exhibition in 'The Art Journal' noted that 'Mr. Sargent is certainly the most discussed artist of the year… as artists almost come to blows over this picture.' The 'Pall Mall Gazette' (a paper widely read by the middle classes) featured 'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' in the category “Pictures You Would Least Like to Live With”, as voted by the readers. However, in a write-up of the show in the 'Magazine of Art,' the painting was praised as an 'extremely original and daring essay in decoration.'

Sargent was once again on everybody’s lips and his reputation restored. That same year, 'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' was bought by the Royal Academy for the British public through the Chantrey Bequest, a special trust fund received by the RA in the will of Sir Francis Chantrey in 1875. Originally housed at the South Kensington Gallery (now the V&A), it was permanently placed in the newly created National Gallery for British Art, now called Tate Britain, where it is now one of the gallery’s most loved paintings."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "The Story behind John Singer Sargent RA's 'Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose' by Harriet Baker.)