A massive masterpiece by famed painter John Singer Sargent is leaving the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on loan for about a year. “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” is a beloved crown jewel at the MFA, and the painting’s departure got us wondering: what makes this 19th century portrait so captivating?
Erica Hirshler shared her thoughts on the subject as we stood in front of Sargent’s work in the MFA’s Art of the Americas wing. “For me, what makes it a masterpiece is that this painting — which was made over a hundred years ago — still speaks to us,” the senior curator of American paintings said. “It’s still mysterious. It’s still intriguing.”
Museums around the world have greatest hits in their galleries that are so compelling people return to gaze at them again and again. At the MFA “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” is one of them.
“This being one of the treasures of our collection, we very, very, very rarely let it go,” Hirshler said. The MFA last loaned the painting in 2010 for a major show at the Prado Museum in Madrid. “And we will be lending it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. They’ve co-organized an exhibition about Sargent’s Parisian career.”
MFA staff affectionately refer this piece as “the Boits.” Hirshler fell under its spell as a teen, studied it deeply for decades, and authored the book “Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting.”
“I never get tired of looking at it,” she said. “To me there’s something always more to learn, some other secret, that I just have to try and ferret out from this amazing canvas.”
The square canvas measures 8 by 8 feet. Its unconventional shape and large size draw viewers into a scene featuring four young sisters — all wearing white — inside their dimly lit Paris apartment.
“It’s not filled with lots of furniture and details and the kinds of things little girls played with in 1882,” Hirshler said. “And they’re scattered around the composition each lost in their own world, they’re not playing with each other.”
4-year-old Julia Boit sits holding a baby doll in the foreground, legs splayed, looking straight at us. Her older sisters stand nearby, half in shadow, receding into the background.
But you might be wondering: who were the Boits?
“The Boits were the four daughters of Ned and Isa Boyt, who were Bostonians who expatriated to Paris,” Hirshler said. “Isa Boit was a very lively, energetic woman who was interested in the arts, and she made friends with Sargent fairly early on.”
The artist was also an American ex-pat living in Paris. “Sargent knew the family really well — and the girls were familiar with him — so they look comfortable,” Hirshler continued. “They look as if they’ve been interrupted at something, but they’re not scared or defiant, they’re very much themselves.”
Sargent was 26, and on his way to becoming the most celebrated portraitist of his day, when he made his genre-skirting painting of the Boits in 1882. About six months later the work’s haunting casualness got critics talking at an annual exhibition in Paris called the Salon, as did the rising artist’s unusual composition.
“He leaves the back completely mysterious, it descends into darkness,” Hirshler said. “And some critics called it ‘four corners and a void.”
These days the intriguing image is a staple in art history classes and a darling on the MFA’s Instagram account. It has even inspired tattoos.
“This painting is really identified with the MFA in a lot of ways,” Hirshler said. “It’s been here since 1912, it was given to us by the four girls in 1915, and it’s pretty much been on view here ever since.”
Hirshler will miss “The Boits” while they’re away, and she’s not alone. When local artist Judith Robichaud visits the MFA she heads straight for the sisters in their bright white pinafores.
“I always love how Sargent uses white, and he uses a lot of it,” she said pointing at the artist’s brushstrokes. “If you go up close you’ll see a lot of texture. And it’s a lead white, so it has a pearly quality. It’s just so vibrant, it’s my favorite painting here.”
Robichaud came to the gallery on this day with an artist friend to catch a farewell glimpse of Sargent’s masterpiece. “I heard it was going to be on loan,” she said, “and we just wanted to admire it before it goes off.”
Visitors can bid bon voyage to “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” through March 3. The exhibition “Sargent and Paris” opens on April 27 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then at the Musée d’Orsay in September.
