The Daughters, Afterward
JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856 - 1925)
Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882
Oil on canvas
221.9 x 222.6 cm (87 3/8 x 87 5/8 in.)
Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Mary Louisa Boit, Julia Overing Boit, Jane Hubbard Boit, and Florence D. Boit in memory of their father, Edward Darley Boit, 1919.
Ruth Bernard Yeazell reviews Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting by Erica Hirshler (MFA) in the August 5th issue of the London Review of Books. It is the kind of book I would want to write if I were a museum curator: the story of a painting which is not just the history of the work but is about the artist and his critics and his friends as well as about the sitters in the painting and their lives before and after, their world, their time and place.
In this case, the subjects were not especially famous. None of the four girls married, although spinsterhood wasn't all that unusual for women of their era and class, according to Hirshler. A 1910 social register lists more than a dozen houses on Boston's Chestnut Street having one or more "Miss" in residence. Florence, the oldest, leaning with her back to the vase, ended up in a "Boston marriage" with a cousin who taught science at a local woman's college. Of course, being a wife and mother weren't the only options for a girl in those days, just the expected ones. I'm thinking of Sargent's portrait of the three Wyndham sisters who made such important and interesting matches.
It might be worth mentioning here, however, in these times when marriage rights are so much in the news, that traditional marriage involved no "equal" rights and in fact conveyed no financial or legal protections to the woman partner, beyond the dubious right to give up her name and her dowry. With their mother dead, it is small wonder the painting's title references the girls' father only; they were after all his responsibility and to some degree his property, belonging to him the way the monumental pair of Japanese vases did. At least in a Boston marriage, two women could retain some elements of their own identity, not sacrificed at the altar, although still subject to the approval of father, or uncle or brother. The Misses Boit had no male siblings, however, having lost one brother as an infant, with another committed to an institution for the feeble-minded. In any event, ERA or not, we have come a long way from the days when marriage was about the conveyance of a piece of chattel in the form of a daughter or sister by the males of her family to another male. But I digress.
Funny how much you think you can tell about people from pictures of them. The question is, once you know where their lives are headed, does the painting look different? I think so. I think you begin to imagine that somehow the painter could tell where their lives were headed. The slightly jarring composition with its unsettling barren darkness, its lack of traditional unity -- by contrast think of that white frothy petalled cloud of the Wyndham girls -- Sargent seems to be saying something about these young girls he couldn't possibly have known, which is what was going to happen to them, and where life would take them, afterward.
What a beautiful- elegant post. I am in full head nodding agreement with you. It is really why I love portraiture and reading your blog and trying to share some ideas on my own. always a pleasure to come here and be inspired, a tad envious(in the best of ways) and satiated. pgt
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a stunning post...and painting.
i think you should also do an art blog...
in your spare time.
xxx
bd
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This is your sister, catching up on the Blog and the family at the same time - love the Sam, etc. stories and Liv's self portrait with snail. And, yes, it is cool to know what happens to people who are in a painting...
B
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I don't know if it's cool to know the lives painting subjects had. Maybe we are really curious and fascinated by their eternity. Your post is not only elegant but, as usual
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