The Artist_s Magazine 2016-03__

March 2016 37

watching their daughter, the infanta, as her

retinue tries desperately to amuse her. John

Singer Sargent used this painting as a start-

ingpointforhisbrilliantDaughters of Edward

Darley Boit(MuseumofFineArts,Boston)

andFairieldPortergivesthepaintingasimi-

larnodintheportraitofhisdaughterLizin

he Mirror(Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,

Kansas City, Mo.)

Another key painting,he Bellelli Family

(Muséed’Orsay,Paris)byEdgarDegas,also

includes a mirror. Beautifully composed on

a formal level, this painting holds great psy-

chological complexity and depth. h e black

dresses of the daughters merge with the dark

shape of the mother, forming a triangular mass

on the left side of the painting. h e father sits

with his back to the viewer and is separated

from the mother and daughters by a desk and

mirror. h is arrangement was meant to rel ect

the actual family dynamic; the daughters iden-

tify with the mother and are distanced from the

father. One daughter straddles the center of

the painting, torn between her two parents.

Compositional Drawing

For the i rst sitting, the entire Ksander Hicks

family came to my studio. I had a rough idea of

what I wanted but not a predetermined notion

of how to arrange the subjects. I had set an

old green upholstered chair at an angle upon

a worn Oriental carpet in front of a partition.

Solveig, Yael’s daughter, sat in the chair. Her

brother, Jarno, sat cross-legged at the foot of

the chair. Glenn, their father, lowered himself

into a Mission swivel chair across from Solveig

and slowly extended his legs. Yael stood

behind everyone with her hand resting on top

of Solveig’s chair. We’d been in the studio less

than 10 minutes, and the family had naturally

arranged themselves into a pose. To ensure

consistency from session to session, I marked

everyone’s position with masking tape.

I spent most of the i rst day working on a

drawing in charcoal and carbon pencil ( 1 ). Even

though I draw i gures often, I struggled with

this drawing and wasn’t all that happy with it,

but there was enough information in the draw-

ing to allow me to grid it and transfer the com-

position to an 18x24 canvas for a color sketch.

Color Sketch

I transferred my black-and-white drawing to

the 18x24 canvas in more or less monochro-

matic oils with a little temperature variation. I

included little specii c information at this point.

When the family came for the second session,

I worked aggressively in color. h e monochro-

matic underpainting was a guide, but I didn’t

let it predetermine the outcome of the painted

sketch. h e scale was small enough to allow me

to place the i gures and their surroundings as

shapes and spots of color. I got most of what I

wanted from this second sitting but not quite

1 2

ABOVE LEFT: 1.

(February 1) Com-

positional drawing in

charcoal and carbon

pencil

ABOVE RIGHT:

2. (February 9)

Compositional color

sketch