John Singer Sargent's renowned portrait “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" is examined in an aesthetic, philosophical, and personal tour de force that has been called “thoroughly absorbing" (New York Times Book Review); “brilliant and insightful"?(Wall Street Journal); “an attractive, well-illustrated scholarly book, further enlivened by the author's warm and friendly tone" (Times Literary Supplement); “a uniquely crafted history" (The Magazine Antiques); “a brilliant work of criticism, without a word of jargon in it" (Maine Antique Digest); “sensitive and penetrating" (Choice); and “a meticulously researched account of [the Boits'] milieu, their eccentric lifestyle, its unintended effects on their daughters, and of the creation of the enchanting masterwork" (Cape Cod Times).