gilt gesso · oil on panel · parlour, west wall
oval, gilt, gessoed and beaded — made by a workshop that specialised in double portraits and so cut its panels and its frames already in pairs. the workshop closed in 1903. the panel inside it was painted in 1898, possibly by the same hand that did the round portrait upstairs; the signature reads only h.v. and could mean several people.
two figures — half-length, side by side, one slightly closer to the viewer than the other. the cataloguer in 1962 marked them as "two figures, unidentified". they may be siblings; they may be us; they may have been painted from separate sittings and put into the same oval for convenience.
they look out at you with what is either patience or polite indifference. the longer you look, the less you can tell which.
field-note an oval is a kind of held breath. two figures inside one oval are a held breath shared.