The Ragan Sisters

Jacob Eichholtz

National Gallery of Art

Two young, pale-skinned girls wearing white stand side-by-side on a stone terrace in this vertical portrait painting. Each girl wears a long-sleeved, floor-length white dress with a ruffled collar and cuffs. The girl on the left wears a bonnet decorated with white, pink, and red flowers. Carnation-pink ribbons wrap around the crown and ripple off each side, presumably to be tied under the chin. She holds a tawny-brown book about the size of a postcard down in her right hand, to our left. She wraps her other arm around the waist of the second girl, who drapes one arm across the first girl’s shoulders. This second girl’s other arm rests across her middle, and the ribbons of her bonnet, which is identical to the first, are tied in a bow and hangs from that forearm. Both girls have heart-shaped faces, flushed cheeks, flat noses, wide-set eyes, and pale pink lips, which curve in slight smiles. Both have honey-brown hair combed to one side and pulled back. Behind them, a stone balustrade and pillars enclose the space, and a red curtain is drawn to the right side of the painting. Above the wall, dark clouds crowd the evening sky. The ground or terrace is olive green.