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MARCO WERMAN: In the 19th century Paris was the capital of the art world. Artists from around the world went there to train and exhibit their work. Many were American. One of them was John Singer Sargent. In 1882 Sargent painted a portrait of the four daughters of an American family living in Paris. The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit is considered one of the masterpieces of the late 19th century. Art historian Erica Hirshler has just written a book about the rich story behind the painting. It’s called Sergeant’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting. I met Hirshler at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where she is a senior curator. The museum is also home to the Daughter’s of Edward Darley Boit.
ERICA HIRSHLER: The picture is big. That’s the first thing to note about it. It’s about seven and a half feet tall. And one interesting thing about it is that it’s square which is not the usual portrait or landscape format that we expect. So the figures are spread across this big, square, composition. And they’re four little girls, each one wearing one. Three of them in white pinafores and the littlest one in a white dress. Two of them stand in the background, in the shadows. One of those girls leans against one of the large Japanese vases that are in the hallway represented here. One stands … .
WERMAN: Yeah the actual vases are here from the Boit’s home.
HIRSHLER: These are in fact the vases that the Boit’s owned and were given to us by the family. And the vases, along with the painting, traveled back and forth across the Atlantic along with the family. It’s sort of amazing to consider that kind of thing.
WERMAN: And something that just kind of immediately strikes me is that the background is kind of drab but these expressions are so clear on these girls.
HIRSHLER: Well the great art of this picture I think is that some parts are very clearly defined. The little girl on the rug or the expression on the face of Isa who stands at the left. And other parts are very mysterious almost like these girls have come out of Alice in Wonderland.
WERMAN: So I mean once you start to dig there’s obviously much more here than meets the eye. I mean we know from your book that Sargent and the Boits had in common kind of a well-to-do Massachusetts background, Harvard connections, and they generally preferred living in Europe. What was it like for American ex-patriots at the end of the 19th century just trotting around the world like that?
HIRSHLER: Well it’s really like reading Henry Jame’s novels. That sort of back and forth between the Americas and the life in Europe that was so different and also so appealing for Americans of a certain class. This idea of being an American abroad and that sense of transience that you were in Paris now but maybe you’d be in Italy in a few months or back in Boston.
WERMAN: And I imagine at the time if you were doing that you weren’t just in the upper 10 percent; you were in the upper one percent of society.
HIRSHLER: Well you were pretty well off. But what we forget is that it was cheaper for Americans to live in Europe in the 19th century. The housing expenses were less and you could live in a grander style abroad sometimes than you could at home.
WERMAN: Tell me about Sargent a bit. He was born in Italy. He studied art a bit in Florence and then went to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. I mean did Sargent have an advantage in that he came from American money? Or was it really all about talent and originality for him?
HIRSHLER: I think Sargent was comfortable. I don’t think … . He certainly wasn’t in the same income bracket as the Boits. But for Sargent Europe was the place to be. Paris at this time was really the international capital of the Western art world. And people flocked there from every country. There were more Americans probably than anybody else but artists from Finland, Germany, Argentina, everywhere came to Paris which was renowned for its art schools. It was renowned for its international exhibitions, where an artist could show his work and get international press. And it also was the center of the art market. So if you were an artist Paris was absolutely the place to be.
WERMAN: So what did the critics say after they saw this large, square, painting of these four sisters at the Salon 1883.
HIRSHLER: The reviews at the Salon which was a giant international exhibition that was sponsored by the French state and one of the highlights of the international art year, were absolutely mixed. Some critics loved it for the way that it took an old subject and made it new again. And others were totally perplexed by the sort of big empty spaces that surround these four girls and for the disconnection between them. Some of them called it four portraits in one picture. One of them called it four corners and a void. And a lot of them found it very unconventional for its day.
WERMAN: So in spite of the modesty of this painting, the way these girls look, they do seem like they’re headed for a life destined for debutant balls and you know great marriages. What happened to them?
HIRSHLER: Well they were in fact of a class to be destined for debutant balls and great marriages and that’s one of the interesting stories that circles around this picture. In fact none of these girls ever married. And some people feel that this painting in some way is a premonition of what was going to happen to them – that their loneliness displayed here somehow shows that. But it’s a painting that continues to attract attention and great love and admiration. It’s one of the most popular paintings in the museum. It’s a monument of its own time but it’s also reflective of our own interests and I think that’s one of the things that makes it so special.
WERMAN: Erica Hirshler, art historian and the author of Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting. Thank you for showing us the painting and for talking to us about it.
HIRSHLER: You’re very welcome.
WERMAN: The Boit daughters donated the painting to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1919 after their father’s death. We’ve posted pictures of the painting plus information about Erica Hirshler’s book at The World dot org.
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