Portrait of Dorothy Barnard

John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Dorothy Barnard (1889) depicts one of the daughters of Frederick Barnard, a prominent Punch illustrator and family friend of Sargent's. Dorothy and Polly Barnard had appeared as the mysterious dancing children in his notorious Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885-86); this later individual portrait gives Dorothy a more conventional formal treatment. The intimacy of the Barnard family connection infuses the portrait with a quality different from his commissioned society work — the painter documenting a child he knew personally rather than producing a social document for institutional or family display.

Sargent renders Dorothy Barnard with the particular combination of technical mastery and personal warmth that characterizes his portraits of known individuals. His handling of a child subject adapts his bravura technique to the specific qualities of childhood: the unguarded expression, the particular proportions of a young face. His palette is fresh and light, appropriate to the youth of his subject. The brushwork is confident but gentle — Sargent at his most personal rather than his most performatively brilliant.