Oil paint on canvas
Tate collection highlights
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Works with images
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Chantrey Bequest
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-singer-sargent-475" aria-label="More by John Singer Sargent" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">John Singer Sargent</a>
Carnation Lily Lily Rose
Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1887
architecture
Barnard, Dorothy
Barnard, Polly
Broadway
carnation
children
England
England, South West
England, Southern
evening
garden
garden structures
girl
Gloucestershire
heating and lighting
individuals: female
lantern
lily
named individuals
objects
people
places
plants and flowers
portraits
rose
times of the day
UK cities, towns and villages
UK counties
UK countries and regions
<p>The children lighting lanterns are Dolly and Polly Barnard. John Singer Sargent was friends with their father, illustrator Frederick Barnard. Sargent painted it in a garden in Broadway, a village in south-west England where Sargent stayed in the summer of 1885. Sargent wanted to paint from real life. There were only a few minutes each evening where the light was right. He would place his easel and paints, pose the models beforehand, and wait for the right moment to start. As summer ended and the flowers died, he replaced them with pot plants.</p><p><em>Gallery label, May 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
8 August 2001 – 21 April 2003
2003-04-21
8 August 2001 – 21 April 2003
2003-04-21
2001-08-08
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-08-08
French Influence on British Art
Collection based display
3 June 2004 – 15 May 2005
2005-05-15
3 June 2004 – 30 August 2004
2004-08-30
2004-06-03
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2004-06-03
Art of the Garden
Exhibition
8 August 2005 – 4 October 2010
2010-10-04
8 August 2005 – 4 October 2010
2010-10-04
2005-08-08
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-08-08
Victorian Spectacle
Collection based display
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
2012-11-05
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-05
Gallery 9
Collection based display
7 August 2014 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
7 August 2014
2014-08-07
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2014-08-07
Gallery 9
Collection based display
5 February 2015 – 4 October 2015
2015-10-04
5 February 2015 – 25 May 2015
2015-05-25
2015-02-05
National Portrait Gallery (London, UK)
http://www.npg.org.uk
2015-02-05
John Singer Sargent: Artists, Writers, Actors and Musicians
Loan-out
11 May 2016 – 25 September 2016
2016-09-25
11 May 2016 – 25 September 2016
2016-09-25
2016-05-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2016-05-11
Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the modern age
Exhibition
8 October 2023 – 7 July 2024
2024-07-07
21 February 2024 – 7 July 2024
2024-07-07
2024-02-21
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-10-08
Sargent and Fashion
Exhibition
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
support: 1740 × 1537 mm
frame: 2185 × 1970 × 130 mm
Presented by the Trustees of the <a href="/search?gid=999999977" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Chantrey Bequest</a> 1887
<p>The inspiration for this picture came during a boating expedition Sargent took on the
Thames at Pangbourne in September 1885, with the American artist Edwin Austin Abbey, during which he saw Chinese lanterns hanging among trees and lilies. He began the picture while staying at the home of the painter F.D. Millet at Broadway,
Worcestershire, shortly after his move to Britain from Paris. At first he used the Millets's five-year-old daughter Katharine as his model, but she was soon replaced by Polly and Dorothy (Dolly) Barnard, the daughters of the illustrator Frederick
Barnard, because they had the exact haircolour Sargent was seeking. Dolly, aged eleven, is on the left; Polly, aged seven, is on the right. A sketchbook at the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, includes Sargent's outline designs for the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>, and two
<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> at the Tate (Tate Gallery <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="/art/artworks/A00850" onclick="popTateObjects(event, -1, 'A00850');" title="View details of this artwork"><span>A00850</span></a>-1) record the precise poses he required for the girls' profiles.</p><p>He worked on the picture, one of the few figure compositions he ever made out of doors in the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/impressionism" title="Glossary definition for 'Impressionism'"><span>Impressionist</span></a>
manner, from September to early November 1885, and again at the Millets's new home, Russell House, Broadway, during the summer of 1886, completing it some time in October. Sargent was able to work for only a few minutes each evening when the light was
exactly right. He would place his easel and paints beforehand, and pose his models in anticipation of the few moments when he could paint the mauvish light of dusk. As autumn came and the flowers died, he was forced to replace the blossoms with
artificial flowers. His friend Edmund Gosse recorded Sargent's working method: </p><blockquote>	Instantly, he took up his place at a distance from the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a>, and at a certain notation of 	the light ran forward over the lawn with the action of a wag-tail,
planting at the same time, 	rapid dabs of paint on the picture, and then retiring again, only, with equal suddenness, to 	repeat the wag-tail action. All this occupied but two or three minutes, the light rapidly 	declining, and then, while he left the
young ladies to remove his machinery, Sargent would 	join us again, so long as the twilight permitted, in a last turn at lawn tennis.<br/>								(quoted in Charteris, pp.74-5)</blockquote>Edwin Howland Blashfield, a member of the artists' colony at
Broadway that year, recalled that when he saw the canvas each morning, the previous evening's work seemed to have been scraped off, and that this happened repeatedly at each stage. Sargent cut two feet off the left side of the canvas, leaving it
approximately square, in order to concentrate the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>.<p>The picture was both acclaimed and decried at the 1887 Royal Academy exhibition. The title comes from the song 'The Wreath', by the eighteenth-century composer of operas Joseph
Mazzinghi, which was popular in the 1880s. Sargent and his circle frequently sang around the piano at Broadway. The refrain of the song asks the question 'Have you seen my Flora pass this way?' to which the answer is 'Carnation, Lily, Lily,
Rose'.</p><p> The picture was bought for the Tate Gallery in 1887, under the terms of the Chantrey bequest, largely at the insistence of the Royal Academy President, Sir Frederic Leighton. A <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portrait</span></a> by Sargent of Mrs Barnard (1885), made at the same time
as <em>Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose</em>, is also in the Tate (Tate Gallery <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="/art/artworks/N05901" onclick="popTateObjects(event, -1, 'N05901');" title="View details of this artwork"><span>N05901</span></a>).</p><p><strong>Further reading:</strong><br/>The Hon. Evan Charteris, <em>John Sargent</em>, London 1927, pp.74-5, 78, 83-4, 96, 178,
252<br/>Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, <em>Tate Gallery Catalogues: The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</em>, II, London 1965, pp.587-8</p><p>Terry Riggs<br/>February 1998<!-- end text --></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div><p><span>The children lighting lanterns are Dolly and Polly Barnard. John Singer Sargent was friends with their father, illustrator Frederick Barnard. Sargent painted it in a garden in Broadway, a village in south-west England where Sargent stayed in the summer of 1885. Sargent wanted to paint from real life. There were only a few minutes each evening where the light was right. He would place his easel and paints, pose the models beforehand, and wait for the right moment to start. As summer ended and the flowers died, he replaced them with pot plants.</span></p></div>
Online caption
2024-04-22T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
<p><b>N01615</b> CARNATION, LILY, LILY, ROSE 1885–6</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Inscr. ‘John S. Sargent’ t.l.
<br/>Canvas, 68 1/2×60 1/2 (174×154); a  3/4 (2) wide painted strip turned over along top and left edges.
<br/>Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1887.
<br/><i>Exh:</i> R.A., 1887 (359); R.A., winter 1926 (47).
<br/><i>Lit:</i> E. V.Lucas, <i>Edwin Austin Abbey, R.A.</i>, 1, 1921, p.151; Downes, 1925, pp.24–5, 140–1; Charteris, 1927, pp.72, 73–5, 78, 84–5, 96, 178–9, 282–3; Mount, 1955, pp.101–4, 108, 110–12, 114, 411–12; McKibbin, 1956, pp.83, 87; Mount, 1957, pp.85–8, 91, 93–4, 96–7, 102, 333, repr. pl.5; Mount, <i>Art Quarterly</i>, XXVI, 1963, p.406.
<br/><i>Repr:</i>
<i>Art Journal</i>, 1888, facing p.65; Wood, n.d., p.40 (in colour); Pousette-Dart, 1924, n.p.; Manson and Meynell, 1927, n.p.</p>
<p>This is one of the few finished pictures the artist painted out of doors in England. The scene is of two white-clad children in a garden lighting Chinese lanterns among the flowers on a twilit summer evening. The idea for the lighting effect in this picture came to the artist while on a boating trip with Edwin Abbey in 1885. One September evening by the Thames at Pangbourne he saw Chinese lanterns hung among the trees and beds of lilies. Charteris points out, however, that a sketch made at Lavington Rectory in 1884 for the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portrait</span></a> of ‘Vincent Cartwright Vickers and Dorothy Vickers’ anticipates the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> of ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’ in so far as it shows two children walking in a garden with a watering-can against a background of tall white lilies (repr. in <i>Studio</i>, XC, 1925, p.79; measures 53 1/2×35 1/2 in., and apparently shown in the R.A. memorial exhibition, 1926, although not listed in the catalogue).</p>
<p>The artist went on from Pangbourne to stay with Mr and Mrs F. D. Millet at Farnham House, Broadway, Worcestershire, and began work on the large <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a>, choosing for his model the Millets' small daughter, Katharine. Miss Millet, then aged five, was superseded by Polly and Dorothy (Dolly) Barnard, daughters of Frederick Barnard, the illustrator, who was living near by (for a portrait of Mrs Barnard, see <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sargent-mrs-frederick-barnard-n05901" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05901</span></a>). Dorothy aged eleven is on the left, and Polly, aged seven, on the right. Their hair was exactly the colour Sargent wanted and, in order to catch them in natural poses he made many <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/graphite" title="Glossary definition for 'Graphite'"><span>pencil</span></a> studies and sketches of them on the spot as they played, two of which are in the Tate, <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sargent-dorothy-barnard-a00850" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>A00850</span></a> and <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sargent-polly-barnard-a00851" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>A00851</span></a>.</p>
<p>Sargent worked on this picture from September (letter of 10 September [1885] from Sargent to Edward Russell, in Tate Gallery archives and quoted <i>in extenso</i> by Mount, 1955, p.104 and 1957, pp.87–8) until early November 1885 and again at the Millets' new home, Russell House, Broadway, during the summer of 1886, finishing it some time in October of that year. Progress was necessarily slow, for the picture was painted out of doors and work could only proceed for a few minutes each evening when the right kind of mauvish light was present. Artificial flowers replaced the dying natural blossoms as autumn approached. Mount notes (1955, pp.111–12, 412) that Edwin Howland Blashfield, one of the group of artists working at Broadway in 1885, recalled that when he saw the canvas each morning it appeared to have been scraped down so that all the previous night's work was erased, and that this happened again and again. Furthermore, Sargent reduced the canvas by 2 ft. cut from the left, leaving it approximately square, and thereby concentrated the composition which until then had dissatisfied him.</p>
<p>A list of five oil studies, two measuring 28×18 in. (formerly in Mrs F. D. Millet's collection), and a larger version, 53 1/2×35 1/2 in. (Master and Miss Vickers, see above), is given by McKibbin, and the variations in the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/proportion" title="Glossary definition for 'Proportion'"><span>proportions</span></a> of these works seem to suggest that it was some time before Sargent decided upon the shape of the composition. The version (23 1/2×19 1/2in.) formerly belonging to Sir Alan Parsons was sold at Sotheby's, 21 November 1962 (56), bt. Patch for Newhouse Galleries, New York (repr. <i>The Ivory Hammer; the year at Sotheby's 219th Season 1962–63</i>, 1963, p.53). A sixth study, not traced, was shown at Copley Hall, Boston, 1899; this and a study of ‘Poppies’, 24×36 in., which was sold with the two studies belonging to Mrs Millet at Sotheby's, 10 June 1942 (88), are not mentioned by McKibbin.</p>
<p>The title of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> is taken from a line of a popular song, identified by McKibbin as ‘The Wreath’ by Joseph Mazzinghi, in which the question ‘Have you seen my Flora pass this way?’ is answered with the words ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’ (quoted Charteris, p.78). A parody of this title, almost certainly wrongly attributed to J. McN. Whistler, was ‘Darnation, Silly, Silly Pose’; indeed Charteris (pp.178–9) has suggested that Sargent was himself responsible for it, remarking on his habit of bestowing mock titles on his work.</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, <i>The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</i>, London 1964, II
<br/>
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
architecture Barnard, Dorothy Barnard, Polly Broadway carnation children England England, Southern England, South West evening garden garden structures girl Gloucestershire heating and lighting individuals: female lantern lily named individuals objects people places plants and flowers portraits rose times of the day UK cities, towns and villages UK counties UK countries and regions