Daughters Of Edward Darley Boit Analysis

My trip to the Museum of Fine arts brought me to John Singer Sargent’s “Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” (1882). The room devoted to Sargent caught my eye with its beautiful poised portraits of mostly sisters, wives, and daughters. He seemed to enjoy capturing family relationships. Coming across this particular painting, I noticed its differences from the rest of the gallery. This was intended to be a family portrait of Boit’s four young daughters, however it became an interpretation of what Sargent saw the girls’ personalities as, contrasting from many of his other works of portraits. I interpreted his strategic placement of the girls as a nod to family structure, inspiration from another past work of art, and the feel of Realism in the painting.
The artwork stood at about 87 x 87 inches (MFA Directory). The scene was captured in oil paint on canvas (MFA directory). Bordering on either sides of the gold frame were two large vases that looked identical to the ones in the picture. If you stood back, it almost made it look like an extension of the painting itself, bringing you into the room with the four girls. This made for a more personal experience with the piece just by its placement within the museum.
The color palette used here contained a lot of
He had painted himself into the image of “Las Meninas” using the British royal family as subjects, and himself as the artist (MFA Museum Label). Diego Velázquez painted “Las Meninas” in 1656, but this still inspired Sargent (MFA Museum Label). When I saw “Daughters of Edward Darley Boit”, the youngest girl in white reminded me of the little Spanish princess pictured in “Las Meninas”. The label next to the painting confirmed my suspicion. Although the set up of the two paintings are very different, it is clear that Sargent used the same general colors that Velazquez used and it had the same eerie