Study for Two Sisters Contemplating on Mortality

Between 1763 and 1770/1, Romney recorded his development in a remarkable sketchbook of some 625 drawings, known as the Kendal Town Hall Sketchbook. The book traces the development of his portrait practice, and as an artist of classical and mythological subjects. Pages from another sketchbook, in the collection of Arnold Fellows, also relate to a number of the subjects seen in the Kendal book, and include this study of the two sisters. 

In 1769, Romney showed a picture of Sir George Warren and his family at the Free Society of Artists, for which studies appeared in the Fellows collection, underlining his position and demand for his services as a portrait painter. With a lifetime enmity between him and Reynolds, he was never invited to join the Academy. 

In 1782, Romney met Emma Hamilton (then Hart), ending up painting more than 60 portraits of her in various poses, sometimes as a mythological or historical figure. In the last two years of his life, Romney returned, ill, to Kendal, where he was nursed by his wife, Mary.

This satisfyingly composed and balanced study of two seated sisters, one playing a stringed instrument, followed on from a 1766 exhibition picture of his 'Two Brothers', eventually becoming the painting 'Two Sisters Contemplating on Mortality'. On the back of the sheet is part of a study of Perseus and Andromeda, cut up when this drawing was removed from its sketchbook.