The Sisters
Two pale-skinned girls stand hand in hand in a grassy field in this vertical painting. To our left, the younger girl is about two heads shorter than her companion and holds a doll clutched in the crook of her right arm. She has short, light blond hair, and she stares at us or just above our heads with wide, blue eyes. She has round cheeks, and her rosebud-shaped mouth is parted. She wears a moss-green skirt patterned with lilac-purple flowers, a tan sash around her waist, and a shirt with violet-purple and navy-blue, vertical stripes on the torso and elbow-length white sleeves. One calf-high boot slouches down and the other brushes the bottom of her flaring skirts. Her doll wears a grayish-blue dress with a brown hem and fog-gray stockings. The taller girl on our right holds the smaller girl’s hand and turns to look down at her. Her cheeks are rosy, and her flaxen yellow hair falls nearly to her shoulders. She wears a vivid, apricot-orange dress with elbow-length sleeves, a light blue kerchief tied in a bow around her neck, and dark brown stockings and shoes. The girls stand close to each other and us in front of a grassy field dotted with blue, yellow, and white flowers. Two white goats graze in the distance behind the smaller girl. Reddish brown roofs suggest that houses nestle into a dip beyond the meadow. Smoke curls from a couple chimneys. The horizon nearly reaches the top edge of the painting so only a sliver of silvery gray sky lines the top of the composition. The artist signed the bottom right corner: “Gari Melchers.”
Colors in this work
Details
- Artist
- Gari Melchers
- Date
- c. 1895
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 150 × 100.4 cm (59 1/16 × 39 1/2 in.) framed: 184.15 × 133.67 × 17.78 cm (72 1/2 × 52 5/8 × 7 in.)
- Department
- CAB
- Holding institution
- National Gallery of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- national-gallery-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Gift of Curt H. Reisinger
Art Genome Taxonomy
10 tags
Subject Matter
-
Family Metadata · 96%
The title The Sisters identifies the two figures as siblings; their joined hands visually reinforce their relationship, although kinship is not independently established by appearance alone.
-
Childhood Both · 99%
Two child figures are clearly visible in the image, and the catalog describes them as girls, including a younger and taller companion.
-
Rural Life Both · 98%
The figures stand in a grassy, flower-dotted meadow before a settlement with farm animals, establishing a countryside setting.
-
Animals Both · 99%
Two pale goats are visible grazing in the middle distance, and the catalog explicitly identifies them as goats.
-
Landscapes Both · 96%
The meadow, distant settlement, horizon, and narrow strip of sky form a prominent landscape setting around the figures.
-
Flora Both · 97%
Blue, yellow, white, and purple flowers are scattered throughout the meadow and the girls’ clothing, consistent with the catalog’s description of a flower-dotted field.
Visual Qualities
-
Pastel Colors Visual · 88%
The painting uses a soft, lightened palette of pale greens, lavender, muted blues, warm beige, and apricot orange.
Medium and Techniques
-
Oil Painting Metadata · 99%
The National Gallery of Art catalogs the work as oil on canvas.
Time Periods
-
19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog dates the painting to circa 1895.
Tableware, Vessels, and Objects
-
Toy Both · 99%
The younger girl visibly holds a small dressed doll in her arms, and the catalog identifies the object as a doll.
Source & rights
Gari Melchers. The Sisters. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
High-resolution sources
- IIIF image service ↗ 10,765 × 16,215 · National Gallery Of Art · Available