A Game of Bowls.

John Singer Sargent's A Game of Bowls (1889) — the period after Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose when he was building his English reputation — depicts figures at lawn bowls, a quintessentially English summer leisure pursuit. Sargent's English outdoor subjects from this period represent his plein air work at its most relaxed and observational: informal, direct, focused on the specific quality of English garden light rather than on social performance. The bowls game provided the kind of concentrated physical activity-within-leisure that he found useful for figure-in-landscape compositions.

Sargent renders the bowls game with his characteristic outdoor brilliance: the English garden light — dappled or open depending on the setting — falling on white-suited figures in attitudes of concentration. His brushwork is at its most spontaneous in these outdoor leisure subjects, achieving the immediacy of direct observation. The green lawn, the players' white summer dress, the precision of their physical attitudes — all are captured with the decisive economy of a painter who sees clearly and marks confidently.