Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, John Singer Sargent, 1886

“Shepherds, have you seen, / tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way? / A wreath around her head, around her head she wore, / Carnation, lily, lily, rose…”

After the debacle of his controversial portrait of Madame X at the Paris salon, John Singer Sargent retreated to Britain. There, in 1885, he began work on another painting, one which he hoped would overshadow his earlier failure. The title Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is a line from a popular contemporary music-hall song, called “The Wreath,” or “Ye Shepherds Tell Me.” Sargent, a talented pianist, probably could have played it for his hosts, the Millets.

Sargent painstakingly constructed a scene of peaceful, idyllic contentment, where two young girls in white dresses light Chinese lanterns in the evening sky. At first, he planned to use the young Kate Millet as his model; however, Polly and Dorothy Barnard, the older children of his artist friend Frederick Barnard, proved more tractable and more capable of standing still. In the picture, they use long tapers to light paper lanterns, the slim candles echoing the paintbrushes used in gardening to pollinate flowers and by artists to create portraits.

An admirer of Impressionist methods, Sargent worked diligently to get the outdoor lighting effects absolutely right. Usually, he worked in a studio, not Impressionist fashion en plain air. Every evening, he set up his easel and paints in advance, wanting to take advantage of the few precious minutes of perfect lighting. He worked on the painting all summer, often scraping off the previous night’s progress in the morning; when the flowers wilted, he had them replaced with artificial ones. Each aspect of the painting was carefully staged to give the illusion of spontaneity, capturing a single, magical moment on canvas. He even sent the Millets fifty lily bulbs, twenty to plant in pots and the rest for the garden, in order to properly set the scene. Sargent used the unfinished painting as an excuse to return the next summer, and it was finished by October of 1886. The virginal innocence of the work, as well as its lushness and beauty, stood in contrast to the scandalous Madame X, and went a long way toward repairing his tarnished reputation.