![John Singer Sargent - Poppies (a study for ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’) [1886]](http://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7291/27587437971_7b130eb847_b.jpg)
Poppies belongs to a series of innovative paintings and drawings that John Singer Sargent executed in preparation for his Impressionist masterpiece, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Sargent created both works at Broadway, a picturesque village in the English Cotswolds where, along with other notable artists of the time, he spent the late summer and early autumn of 1885 and 1886. Sargent had by this time become a well-known portrait painter of elite society on both sides of the Atlantic and traveled intermittently between England and France for much of the decade. Now immersed in this new pastoral environment, however, he began to engage closely with flower and foliage subjects, and cultivated his growing preoccupation with capturing the most subtle and minute effects of light and shadow on canvas.
[Sotheby’s, New York - Oil on canvas, 61.9 x 91.1 cm]