Ritratto di due ragazze, 1894, pastello su tela, in cornice

Magnificent pastel on canvas representing two little girls of the city bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century.

The frame is made of gilded wood and magnificently sublimated by a frieze of various foliage where the ivy leaves, symbol of fidelity and eternal life, underlines wonderfully the freshness of the angelic faces and the blond hair of these two sisters.

Period : 19th century
Circa : 1894
Dimensions : Height : 75cm x Width : 65 cm
Signature : Bottom right 
Portraitist : Unknown

If the child portrait became a popular genre in Europe in the 16th century, it was during the Enlightenment that it developed in France.

However, the little models were still often subjected to the codes of official portraiture, showing them in their best educated light. 

The accentuated taste for more intimate representations at the end of the Ancien Régime, and the development of family sentiment, thanks to the gradual decline in infant mortality, placed the child at the center of the painting. 

From the 19th century onwards, painters no longer sought to disguise the child as a large person of as a small picturesque subject, but rather sought his truth. 

Alongside the urban bourgeoisie, always posing, other children play the gavroche. Naturalism will eventually have the last word, in the twentieth century.

The XIXth century is not only that of Delacroix, Van Gogh of Cézanne. The immense success of the impressionists often threw into obscurity (contempt and ignorance mixed), many artists practicing all the genres, often appreciated in their lifetime, then fallen into oblivion. 

Nevertheless, the 19th century is one of the richest in the history of painting.