Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose made John Singer Sargent famous for doing what French Impressionists had already been doing for almost ten years.

After the overwhelmingly negative response to the controversial Madam X, John Singer Sargent decided to paint something on the other end of the scandal scale: children. He got the idea after a diving incident in the Thames where he noticed Japanese lanterns hanging on trees across the river. He then conceived a picture of a young girl lighting these lanterns while the atmosphere around her darkened. The perfect picture of childhood innocence.

Sargent’s original model for his painting was Katherine Millet, the five-year-old daughter of Francis Davis Millet (not to be confused with Jean-Francois Millet, though both were painters).  But Sargent insisted that the girl in this painting had to be blonde, and little Katherine was unfortunately brunette and not a fan of the blonde wig Sargent made her wear. Thankfully, Sargent had a lot of other friends with children, including Francis Barnard, the illustrator for many Charles Dickens’ novels. The Barnard girls, Dorothy (who went by Dolly) and Polly, were older than Katherine Millet, and the best part? They were already blonde!

After finding his models, Sargent moved into an artists’ colony in Broadway, Worcestershire, and spent every day for two years working on Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose. Between 6:30 and 7pm, when the light was just right, Sargent interrupted the Barnards' daily tennis game so Dolly and Polly could pose for him. He proceeded to sketch them furiously during this perfect but rapidly declining dusk that never lasted more than a few minutes. This process was so tedious that self-deprecating Sargent nicknamed the painting “Darnation, Silly, Silly, Pose.” The actual name of the painting came from a popular summer song by Joseph Mazzinghi that the Barnard family often sang together. Sargent, who never married or had kids of his own, attempted a counterfeit family life through this painting.

At the 1887 Royal Academy Exhibition, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose was met with mixed, but mostly positive, reception. The painting was revolutionary (to the British) through Sargent’s use of colors and light, leaving a permanent note in the history of English painting. Now considered one of his most famous paintings, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose was essentially responsible for putting John Singer Sargent on the map as a talented portrait artist.

Some critics were unimpressed with Sargent’s French painting style; Sargent was even mistaken for a French painter due to the painting’s Impressionist nature. But despite natural imagery that tells us Sargent painted en plein air (a fancy term for painting outside, rather than inside a studio), Sargent was not exactly an orthodox Impressionist. For instance, Sargent’s use of restrained color, especially the whites and blacks, was definitely not aligned with Impressionist preference of bright, brilliant color. He also employed traditional modeling methods that involved careful planning choices, such as enlisting the Barnard maid to sew white dresses for the girls, or replacing wilted flowers with artificial ones. According to Monet, leader of the Impressionist club, Sargent was too influenced by traditional painters to be a true Impressionist. Looks like Sargent didn’t leave a very good impression on the Impressionists. (See what we did there?)

In Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (which we'll abbreviate going forward), Sargent proves that paintings don't have to be so "serious."

Style-wise, CLLR is an excellent example of aestheticism, a trend in art where subject matter, like historical events or mythology, mattered much less than the beauty of the painting itself, regardless of what it was depicting. The motto was "art for art's sake," and James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were both fans. Positive reviews from the time laud Sargent for this painting's originality, and that he has succeeded in "Leaving the nude and the historic for works of pure fancy.

The children in this painting are Alice (nickname "Polly") and Dorothy ("Dolly") Barnard, the daughters of Sargent's friend and fellow artist Frederick Barnard. Fred's story is a bit tragic: after the death of his son, Polly and Dolly's brother, Fred became very depressed and began to abuse the opioid laudanum, which is similar to morphine. One night, passed out under the influence of the drug, an ember from the pipe he was smoking caught his bedclothes on fire and he was killed. Sargent remained close to the girls, occasionally taking them along on painting trips, and naming them in his will. 

Sargent painted CLLR while summering in a rural English village in Cotswald in 1885. The town, Broadway, had a vibrant community of Victorian era artists, poets, and authors, and so was fertile ground for creativity.