Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is among the most beloved paintings in the Tate collection and a defining statement of late 19th-century Impressionism in England. John Singer Sargent began the work in the summer of 1885, having recently relocated from Paris to the English countryside following the scandal that engulfed his Portrait of Madame X. He set up in the gardens around Broadway in the Cotswolds and painted en plein air, capturing the evanescent quality of twilight — returning to the canvas each day for the few minutes when the fading light produced the work's distinctive violet atmosphere. Two daughters of illustrator Frederick Barnard, eleven-year-old Dolly and seven-year-old Polly, are depicted in white dresses lighting paper lanterns amid an abundant garden of roses, lilies, and carnations. Sargent resumed work the following summer of 1886 before the large oil on canvas — measuring 174 by 154 centimetres — was finally complete. The title comes from the refrain of a popular Victorian glee song. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887 and purchased by the Tate, where it has remained, as a definitive image of golden childhood set in flickering, unearthly light.