Artwork · 19th century · John Singer Sargent

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Two Girls on a Lawn

John Singer Sargentca. 1889Oil on canvas53.7 × 64.1 cm

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At a glance

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Two girls in white dresses lie side by side on a bright green lawn, resting in the summer heat.
John Singer Sargent painted it in oil on canvas around 1889.
It is small, about 64 centimeters wide, and every brushstroke is left showing, so you can almost feel how fast the painter's hand moved.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Start with the girl on the right. She props her cheek on her hand and lets her eyes fall shut. Her face and fingers are just a few quick strokes of pink, yet she looks heavy with sleep. A loose curl of red hair falls across her forehead in a single swipe of the brush.
The girl on the left is almost hidden. The wide brim of her cream-colored hat covers her eyes. All we get is a pink cheek and one dab of red for her lips. Her dark brown hair spreads over her shoulders like a shawl. Is she asleep, or just enjoying the warmth with her eyes closed?
Zoom in on the black hat worn by the girl on the right. A spray of feathers fans out from the top. Sargent did not paint each feather. He flicked the brush upward in short, springy strokes, and the hat seems to bristle.
Look closely and the white dress is not really white. There are streaks of pale blue, violet, and sea green in it. Those are the colors of the grass and the sky bouncing off the fabric. The thick, swirling strokes make the folds seem to ripple.
Don't skip the empty grass in the lower left corner. A wide brush has been swept around in loops, layer over layer. In places you can see the weave of the canvas showing through. This tells us the picture is closer to a fast sketch than a carefully polished showpiece.

When it was painted

By his late twenties, Sargent had made his name in Paris as a portrait painter. Then came 1884. His portrait Madame X, shown at the Paris Salon, drew harsh criticism. In 1886 he left Paris and settled in London, starting over in a new city.

His summers in those years belonged to the English countryside. In 1885 and 1886 he stayed in the Cotswold village of Broadway with a circle of artist friends. There he painted Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, two little girls lighting paper lanterns in a garden at dusk. He worked on it only in the few minutes each evening when the light was right, so it took him two summers.

The girls in that picture were the daughters of his friend, the illustrator Frederick Barnard. The painting was shown at the Royal Academy in London in 1887 and was bought for the British national collection that same year. All that patient outdoor work had paid off.

In the summers that followed, Sargent rented country houses by the river with his mother and sisters and kept painting outside. His youngest sister, Violet, often posed for him in these years.

The painting stayed in the Sargent family. In 1950, twenty-five years after the artist's death, Violet, by then Mrs. Francis Ormond, gave it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Look at the picture once more. Nearly the whole canvas is grass, and it holds the summer daylight he kept going outdoors to catch.

The painter

John Singer Sargent

1856–1925

All paintings by John Singer Sargent →

More by the same painter

Egyptian Woman1890–91

The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy1907

Questions to think about

Look for itHow many colors that are not white can you find inside the white dresses?
Why?Why do you think Sargent let the girls' faces stay half hidden behind a hat brim and a hand?
What about you?When was the last time you lay on the grass and did nothing at all, and do you think people today get enough time like that?

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