Artwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley Boit

The Daughters Of Edward Darley Boit, 1882

John Singer Sargent

Artwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley BoitArtwork Title: The Daughters Of Edward Darley Boit
The foyer of their apartment served as the setting for Sargent’s portrait, a shadowy space in which the painter arranged the Boits’ four daughters: Mary Louisa (8 years old when painted), Florence (14), Jane (12), and Julia (4). While Ned and Isa may have initially approached Sargent to make a traditional portrait, they supported his ambition to create something more unusual, a painting that is half a portrait and half an interior scene. Each of the girls is presented individually, but the features of two are obscured, an attribute antithetical to conventional portraiture and one that, combined with the lack of connection between the girls, stymied critics when the painting was first displayed. Its unusual format was inspired by the art of both the past and the present, a characteristic approach that Sargent employed to make paintings that seemed simultaneously traditional and modern. Sargent placed ... (http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/the-daughters-of-edward-darley-boit-31782)
Uploaded on Jul 20, 2013 by Sara Hayden

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