These Venetian interiors call to mind some of the more modern paintings Sargent might have seen in Paris, particularly the work of Edgar Degas. Sargent’s personal relationship with Degas, if any, is unclear. No known evidence documents more than a passing acquaintance between the two men, although Sargent’s name and his rue Notre Dame des Champs address do appear in one of Degas’s notebooks. Degas used the book for sketches and reminders during the period 1877-83, at just the moment when Sargent seems to have been most affected by the French master’s work. Both men were friendly with composer Emmanuel Chabrier and bassoonist Desiré Dihau, the main figures in Degas’s Orchestra of the Opéra (about 1870, Musée d’Orsay); Dihau also sometimes played with the Pasdeloup Orchestra, which Sargent depicted in 1879. Contemporary sketchbooks of both artists include lively drawings of the gaily dressed clowns who entertained between acts at the Cirque d’Hiver, where Pasdeloup performed, and also at the Cirque Fernando, where Degas painted. Sargent was well acquainted with a number of other artists and writers in Paris who could have brought him into contact with Degas - among them Jacques-Emile Blanche, Mary Cassatt, George Moore, Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, and of course Carolus-Duran (although Degas disparaged him for his slick style) - but there is no record that any of them ever did. While Degas reportedly dismissed Sargent as “a facile painter but not an artist,” Sargent admired Degas: when he visited the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, he made a pencil sketch after Degas’s pastel of a ballerina, L’Etoile, one of the few copies Sargent made after a contemporary work (Worcester Art Museum).53
Whether or not the two men knew or liked each other, the French master’s art became part of Sargent’s visual vocabulary. Echoes of Degas’s subjects and compositions reverberate in his paintings of the late 1870s and early 1880s. Sargent’s interest in subjects from modern life - the Luxembourg Gardens, the Pasdeloup Orchestra - reveal his awareness of the themes explored by Degas and his colleagues, among them the Italian painters active in Paris, such as Giuseppe de Nittis and Giovanni Boldini. The almost monochromatic palette and swirling design of Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d’Hiver (1879, private collection on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago) betray Sargent’s fascination with some of the unconventional formal qualities of Degas’s work. Sargent would never fully develop these avant-garde tendencies, preferring instead to maintain a more conservative profile; as Mary Cassatt snidely remarked, he cared too much what other people thought.54 But in his less formal paintings, including his Venetian interiors, he toyed with some of Degas’s motifs - the tipped-up floors, the oblique sources of filtered light, and the arbitrary arrangement of figures.
Sargent incorporated some of these ingredients into the portraits he was making during the same period. He posed Louise Escudier, for example, next to the tall windows of a Parisian interior, depicting her as a figure within a room rather than as a sitter standing before a backdrop (Madam Paul Escudier [Louise Lefevre], 1882, Art Institute of Chicago). This conceit allowed him to experiment with the effects of half-lights and shadows as they fell across her features from the side. Madame Escudier and the windows are reflected in the small mirror hanging in the background, further expanding the space and diffusing the silvery light. While the portrait is reminiscent of the fashionable French interiors with female figures painted by Sargent’s friend Alfred Stevens, a Belgian artist active in Paris, Sargent did not aspire to Stevens’s polish or to his fascination with the details of decoration and the luster of fabric. His canvas is roughly worked, with some areas barely sketched in and others thickly brushed. The painting relates equally well to his own Venetian interiors, particularly his studies of single figures, some small and some large, which seem to be the remnants of his abandoned ideas for a Salon picture.55
These same properties are apparent in Sargent’s portrait of the Boit daughters. Madame Paul Escudier may even have served as a sort of rehearsal for the Boits, giving Sargent an occasion to experiment with the placement of a figure within a domestic interior, a composition that combines elements of portraiture with an intensive study of light and shadow. The uneven paint surface of Madame Paul Escudier provides evidence of the numerous slight changes Sargent made to the locations of various objects in the room and suggests that he was working out those relationships as he went along. There are no such signs in the Boit portrait; the only areas showing pentimenti are Julia’s lap, where the position of the doll was changed, and the minor repositioning of the figure of Mary Louisa, which moved a bit further down in the picture. The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (like El Jaleo) was painted directly and quickly, brush and palette knife employed with supreme assurance, all of its artistic problems solved in advance.56
Sargent had gained experience with painting children before he rendered the Boit girls; in fact, of all the early portraits he made that might be counted as commissions, fully one-third of them depict young sitters.57 Like any artist at the beginning of his career, he would have been glad to receive genuine orders for portraits, and in response he created engaging likenesses that often reveal the lively personalities of his subjects. Robert de Cévrieux, for example, posed for Sargent with his pet dog. Standing on an oriental rug before a curtained backdrop, the little boy, not yet breeched, is dressed in a fashionable skirted suit with a red bow. He appears to be a polite and dutiful child; his hair is brushed and shiny, his red socks are taut and even, and he presents a shy half smile to the viewer. The child’s restrained energy is made clear through his attribute, the small dog he squeezes tightly under his arm. The animal is alert and animated, squirming to be released, longing to enjoy a freedom that his owner would perhaps also prefer. Sargent borrowed the basic compositional format of Robert de Cévrieux from his teacher Carolus-Duran, who had exhibited portraits of his own children with their dogs at the Salons of 1874 and 1875. But the dashing facility with paint and the sense of contained action and movement were Sargent’s alone.
Sargent does not seem to have exhibited his portrait of Robert de Cévrieux in public, but he never regarded his images of young sitters as minor works, as some artists did. Two years later, in 1881, one of the two paintings that he selected to display at the prestigious Salon was a double portrait of children, then titled Portrait de M. E. P. et de Mlle L. P. (now called Portrait of Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron, 1881, Des Moines Art Center). It depicted sixteen-year-old Edouard Pailleron and his young sister Marie-Louise, the children of Marie and Edouard Pailleron, a prominent Parisian couple whom Sargent had painted (in separate portraits) in 1879. Sargent had shown his striking image of Madame Pailleron, dressed in black and crossing a spring green lawn, at the Salon of 1880. The following year, he returned to the exhibition with this likeness of her children seated together on a low divan strewn with oriental carpets. Although it incorporated similar props, this painting was a more complicated composition than Robert de Cévrieux. It proved to be a critical success for Sargent and served as an important precursor for his portrait of the Boits.
The story of the Pailleron commission enhances our understanding of the difficulties faced by any portrait painter, but it also reveals the particular vicissitudes of dealing with young sitters, who were often bored and sometimes uncooperative. Sargent posed the two Pailleron children in the controlled environment of his studio on the rue Notre Dame des Champs. However, the ability to manage the props and lighting did not mean that Sargent had power over his human subjects. In her later years, Marie-Louise