The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit

The huge blue-and-white Chinese porcelain vases in the shadow are 18th-century Kangxi period pieces from the Boit family home in Paris. In 1997, the Boit heirs donated the actual vases to the Museum of Fine Arts. Today they stand on either side of Sargent's painting in the museum gallery. Everything else in the picture has vanished — the parents, the house, the century. The vases outlasted them all. All four daughters, incidentally, died unmarried. Now at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston @mfaboston