A study for one of John Singer Sargent’s most famous paintings: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

As John Singer Sargent made his way to Broadway, in the Cotswolds, in 1885, he might have been forgiven for wondering when his luck would change. He had just suffered a swimming accident, during a boat tour along the River Thames with his friend Edwin Austin Abbey, the American illustrator.

Diving into the water off a weir, Sargent ‘cut a big gash in the top of his head’, in the words of his companion. The duo repaired to Broadway to allow Sargent some tranquillity and the chance to recover — in the home of Abbey’s friends, the artist Francis Davis Millet and his wife Lily.

The accident took place just a year after another misfortune: a scandal surrounding the exhibition of Madame X at the Paris Salon of 1884. This portrait by Sargent of the society beauty Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau prompted scathing criticism for the way the strap on the subject’s low-cut dress fell off her right shoulder. It was deemed so salacious by so many that Sargent eventually decided to reposition the strap and paint it in a more customary position on Gautreau’s shoulder.

In the wake of the outcry, in his late twenties, he also decided to leave Paris behind for London. Clearly, cutting his head open wasn’t part of his plans on relocating across the English Channel. However, it was in Broadway, during his recuperation, that Sargent conceived one of the most beloved paintings of his career: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885-86), which today forms part of the Tate collection.

An important oil study for the work is being offered in the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale at Christie’s on 5 March 2026.

Sargent’s inspiration for the painting came during his boat trip with Abbey in the summer of 1885 — specifically, on a stretch of the Thames at Pangbourne. There, one evening, they passed a garden filled with lilies, which also had Chinese lanterns hanging from its trees.

During his stay at Farnham House, the Millets’ Broadway abode, Sargent began work on a picture of two girls in white summer dresses. They are seen in a bountiful garden amid roses, carnations and a mass of white lilies. It is a twilit summer’s evening, and the girls are in the process of lighting the latest of several paper lanterns.

Broadway was something of an artists’ and writers’ colony, one that attracted — as well as Millet — the likes of Alfred Parsons, Frederick Barnard, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Edmund Gosse. Barnard’s two daughters, Dolly (aged 11) and Polly (seven), would serve as the models for Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.

Sargent had originally meant to stay in the village for just a few days. He ended up remaining there several weeks. According to his biographer, Stanley Olson, he enjoyed the ‘stimulating burst of communal life’ which marked ‘a triumph over the downtrodden feelings [that had been] brewing within him’.

The work coming to auction focuses on the painting’s right-hand figure, Polly. She adopts a pose similar to that in the finished work: immersed in the delicate task of lighting a lantern. The glow of the candle illuminates the upper part of her face, allowing Sargent to capture the soft radiance of her complexion. Floral forms emerge from the deep green background, and the artist reveals a command of the swift Impressionistic brushwork he had encountered in Paris.

As in Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose itself, a hint of the dreamlike and magical is introduced by the twilight. Sargent worked on the canvas from September to early November 1885, and during a similar period the following year. Progress was necessarily slow: the artist painted it en plein air and could only work for a few minutes each evening, when the requisite violet-hued light was present.

Gosse described the process each day as follows: ‘Everything used to be [readied] — the easel, the canvas, the flowers, the demure little girls in their white dresses — before we began our daily afternoon lawn tennis, in which Sargent took his share. But at that exact moment [when dusk descended], which came a [little] earlier each evening, the game was stopped, and the painter… at a certain notation of the light, ran forward over the lawn with the action of a wagtail, planting… rapid dabs of paint on the picture… All this occupied but two or three minutes, the light rapidly declining, and then… Sargent would join us again, so long as the twilight permitted, in a last turn at lawn tennis.’

As summer turned inexorably into autumn, the artist replaced fading flowers in the Millets’ garden with artificial ones. In the spring of 1886, he also sent the couple a selection of lily bulbs for planting — to increase the chances of a rich blossom when he returned to Broadway later that year.

The work coming to auction is one of three individual oil studies Sargent did of his subjects — two of Polly and one of Dolly. They all relate closely to the finished painting, and are all today in private collections.

The artist is thought to have given the present work to Lily Millet, in whose collection it remained for many years. It has appeared in numerous exhibitions, including a memorial show held at the Royal Academy in London in 1926, shortly after Sargent’s death.

For almost three decades, it has been in the collection of Carol and Terry Wall, from which a trio of other pictures by Sargent were offered at Christie’s in New York in 2025.

As for Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, it was well received on its debut showing, at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition of 1887. The eminent critic Marion Harry Spielmann, writing in The Magazine of Art, described it as ‘extremely original and daring’. The painting was acquired for the British nation later that same year, and helped launch Sargent’s successful career on the London art scene.

Weaving together strands of progressive practice, such as Impressionism and Aestheticism, it has come to be considered a major work in the advance of British art towards Modernism.

Generations of viewers have admired its vision of childhood innocence, whose end is suggested by the encroaching darkness, but whose continuation for a little while longer is symbolised by the illuminated lanterns.

The work will be on view at Christie’s in New York, 10-13 February 2026

Christie’s 20th/21st Century Art auctions take place in London and online, 25 February to 19 March. Explore the global tour, preview exhibition and sales

Related artists: John Singer Sargent