Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
Carnation Lily Lily Rose is one of John Singer Sargent's most beloved and iconic works, depicting two young girls holding glowing Japanese lanterns amid a twilight garden bursting with lilies and roses. Painted en plein air over two consecutive autumns in Broadway, England, the work captures a fleeting moment of magical luminosity that secured Sargent's reputation with British audiences when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887. Collectors prize this painting as a supreme example of Impressionist influenced technique merged with Sargent's signature bravura brushwork, and the original canvas is held in the permanent collection of Tate Britain in London.
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Spotted At
- Museum · Tate BritainView on map
More by John Singer Sargent
Spotted works by John Singer Sargent
Artists in conversation
Edmund Blair Leighton
British · b. 1853
Leighton painted luminous garden scenes featuring children and women in white dresses amid lush flowers during the same Victorian era, capturing that same soft twilight glow and romantic English garden atmosphere found in Carnation Lily Lily Rose.
Frederick Carl Frieseke
American · b. 1874
Frieseke specialized in plein air oil paintings of figures bathed in dappled garden light amid dense floral settings, sharing Sargent's precise attention to luminous effects, white garments catching ambient light, and the interplay of figures within richly blooming garden environments.
Willard Metcalf
American · b. 1858
Metcalf was a close contemporary American Impressionist who painted plein air garden scenes with glowing ambient light, lush floral settings, and that same evocative twilight luminosity that makes Carnation Lily Lily Rose so distinctive among late 19th century works.
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