The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit

Sargent painted these four sisters in 1882 in their family's Paris apartment, the daughters of Edward Darley Boit, a wealthy American who had moved his family to Europe. He arranged them oddly for a family portrait. The youngest sits on the floor in the light at the front, and the two eldest retreat into a dark hallway behind, almost swallowed by shadow. Framing them are two tall Japanese vases, taller than the girls, which the family carried with them from home to home across the Atlantic. Sargent had copied Velázquez in Madrid, and the square canvas and the deep shadowed room owe a debt to that. Those same vases now stand beside the painting in Boston, given to the museum by the family.