Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
- Artist: John Singer Sargent
- Date: 1885–6
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 1740 x 1537 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” by John Singer Sargent, painted between 1885 and 1886. The scene opens in a suburban English garden on a late summer evening. Two young girls, Dolly and Polly Barnard, are caught mid‑gesture, holding Chinese lanterns that glow against a background of white lilies and a single rose. Sargent captured the fleeting mauve light just after sunset, a moment he could seize only for a few minutes each night. He set up his easel outside, pre‑posed the children, then let the twilight fall on the canvas, wiping and repainting as the light shifted.
The work was created while Sargent had recently moved from Paris to London, and it helped cement his reputation in Britain. He worked in the village of Broadway, Worcestershire, where he painted outdoors for the first time in England. As the summer faded and the real flowers withered, he replaced them with pot plants to keep the composition intact. The painting is one of the few plein‑air pieces he finished in Britain and was purchased through the Chantrey Bequest in 1887. Its title comes from a popular 19th‑century song, echoing the light‑filled lyric “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.”
See it in person
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
