Sargent's Daughters

When I first saw this book, I was thrilled. As a rabid Sargent devotee I am always eager and ready to devour yet another book on the man or his work. And an entire book devoted to the story of just one of his works: the amazing The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit? Nirvana! This piece, like all of Sargent's larger canvases is staggering in its lighting, brushwork and sheer monumental beauty. But this piece goes so far beyond a mere portrait of four young girls and is a masterpiece of scene, generating incredible emotion in just about everyone who views it. I can't recall a single visit to the MFA where dozens (or more) visitors aren't standing in quiet awe before this work, some even moved to tears. I consider myself very lucky indeed that it's permanent home is here in Boston and the only time I have ever been to the MFA and didn't pay it a lengthy visit is when it isn't there as it's been on loan or traveling the world in an exhibit.

So it was with great excitement that I started this book and gobbled up every word. And it wasn't until I was about three-quarters of the way through it that it suddenly occurred to me that in some ways I had now destroyed the personal relationship I had with this mysterious painting. It is one of the only pieces completed by Sargent that has no studies, no notes, no sketches to understand how his mind was working as he undertook this work of staggering and haunting beauty. And haunting it had always been, until this book. While there are still so many unanswered questions in regards to the finer details of how it came to be, so much of who the Boits were and where the daughters' lives led them is now no longer a wonder, but cold hard facts. And I'm not sure how much this has ruined the joy of the unknowing, for me at any rate. I have yet to pay it a visit in the short time since finishing the book.

Given that I was really disappointed in Erica E. Hirshler's A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940, it was a joy to me to find every last page of this new book so thrilling. Am I sorry I read it? Not a chance! Has it changed the way I feel about this painting? Absolutely! But only time will tell just how much I am affected by it. In the long run I'm sure I'll get over it, but good or bad, for me and The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit things will never be the same again.

Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting, Erica E. Hirshler, MFA Publications, 2009.