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Michele, this is a beautiful painting and the children's faces are especially wonderful. I also love the little boy's hand and the way it gracefully cradles his foot, which is also charmingly delineated. The folds in the cloth and the textures are very well done and your use of soft and hard edges is masterful.
Two comments about the way in which your work differs from the Sargent painting you included.
First, at least on my monitor the colors in your painting seem disparate - the blues of Samantha and Ben's eyes and of their slacks have no echo in the rest of the painting so there appears, to me, to be a disconnect and it affects the cohesiveness of the work. Sargent uses a limited palette and employs similar colors and temperatures throughout, which make the painting seem more of a whole. The room in your painting is so warm in color and the children's clothes are so cool that they almost seem as though they're in different universes.
Second, Sargent's faces and figures are obviously posed; they're stiff and formal, which was the style then in classical painting. The immediacy and warmth of the expressions you've captured could never have been attained without some photo references, so you'd have to scrap them and go with long, rather artificial and contrived-looking poses, or photo references that mimicked them, to create the same drama and staginess that Sargent painted.
There is so much to admire in your painting that I would be thrilled with it as is, had I produced it.
Leslie
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