This is a painting by Dou, where the objects are painted close to the light-source, so they still receive enough light to be painted convincingly.

This is a painting by Godfried Schalcken.

I digitally changed certain things in your photograph (again, if you do not like this, feel free to remove this) with the Schalcken as an example. I copied and pasted the candlelight from the Schalcken. I made the image warmer and lowered the key in tone and values. So the candlelight is very light compared to the face of the girl.

I really like your photograph, I think I am going to do something as well in that direction.

Greetings,
Peter

Thanks for these, Peter. Great examples that will help me when I get a chance to finish this painting!

I just found this work Michele. It's very nice. You must realize that part of the appeal of the work is that it is solid. The cools of the group cluster very nicely amid the warms. You cannot do all that everyone suggests without loosing this solidity that is so appealing. Indeed you might want there to be less behind them, the lamp etc might want to be played down-only to enhance (or increase) the existing solidity. The world has plenty of busy fractured paintings already. Yours' looks pretty good to me.

I think this is a pretty sophisticated work. It has a rare quality; CHARM!

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