This painting is drawn from a slice of a family photograph, but it also combines elements from several different family images. Unlike the first work in the exhibition, which is taken quite directly from a single source image, this piece is more removed from its origins and becomes a partly imagined moment.
The scene depicts two girls sitting by a tree, slightly apart from the main group, as if waiting to be called into the photograph. There is a sense of quietness and contemplation – a pause before being seen. They appear awkward and self-conscious in a way that feels familiar to childhood and to early family portraiture.
The composition is loosely informed by *The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit* (1883) by John Singer Sargent. In that painting, the four girls share a space yet remain emotionally and spatially separate, each occupying their own plane. There is a quiet tension between togetherness and isolation, intimacy and distance.
Although **Edith and Edlue** is not a direct reinterpretation, it draws on a similar atmosphere. One figure sits slightly recessed in a darker space, while the other moves forward into light. This subtle spatial separation allows the painting to hold both connection and individuality at once – sisters who are together, yet inhabiting their own interior worlds. The reference functions less as quotation and more as mood: stillness, anticipation, and the emotional ambiguity of childhood presence.
While the image feels old-fashioned, there are subtle references to newer fabrics and clothing patterns, suggesting the influence of Western dress and materials being brought back from abroad. As with much of the work in the exhibition, the painting sits between memory and invention. It feels historical, but is not tied to a single real moment. Instead, it becomes a constructed memory – a space where family history, imagined narrative, and visual references overlap.
