As noted by the plate on the work’s frame, which is original to the painting, the sitters in this charming small double portrait clearly match the likenesses of Emily (1818–1848) and Anne Brontë (1820–1849) in their brother Branwell’s portrait of the three Brontë sisters now in the National Portrait Gallery, London (fig. 1). Likewise, both paintings are consistent in style with the London painting: the figures are delineated with emphatic, linear outlining, the paint is thinly applied, and a certain stiffness typical of an amateur artist, as the young Branwell was, characterises both works, as well as others known to be by Branwell.


In the present painting the slightly awkward Emily is represented at the left, while the more delicate and attractive Anne is shown at right. Emily and Anne never lived to witness the fame later experienced by their sister Charlotte (1816–1855), author of the extraordinary novel Jane Eyre (1847), as they died in 1848 and 1849, respectively. It seems unlikely that anyone other than a family member would have painted them during their own lifetimes as they lived isolated and quite modest lives. Nevertheless, both were accomplished authors in their own right—Anne is perhaps best known for her novels Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), both classics of English literature, while Emily published the masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, around the same time (1848).


Alden O’Brian, former Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, DC, dates the style of the dresses worn by the two young women in this painting to the late 1820s. However, Mrs. Gaskell, in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (London, 1857) notes that upon the arrival of Charlotte and Emily in Brussels in 1842:

"The Belgian girls thought the new English pupils ‘wild and scared-looking’ with strange odd insular ideas about dress; for Emily had taken a fancy to the fashion, ugly even during its reign, of gigot sleeves and persisted in wearing them long after they were, ‘gone out’. Her petticoats too had not a curve or wave in them, but hung down straight and long, clinging to her lank figure."



Such observations align with the idea that the two young women depicted in this painting appear to be in their late teens or early twenties, and, given that their lives were lived far from fashionable London, it seems quite possible that they continued to wear retardataire styles well past the peak of their popularity. Therefore, the work may be dated to the early months of 1838. Anne was absent from the family circle from 1835–37, working at Miss Wooler’s School at Roe Head, Mirfield, and again as governess at Blake Hall, Mirfield in 1839. Moreover, Branwell is recorded as having spent June 1838 to May 1839 as a portrait painter in Bradford. The painting could have been created prior his Bradford sojourn, when Emily was nineteen and Anne eighteen years old. Charlotte is conspicuously absent in this picture; she was teaching in Roe Head from July 1835 to May 1838.


Despite their unfashionable dresses, Branwell Brontë’s depiction of his sisters Emily and Anne is an important document of this exceptionally revered literary family. Marks of the young women’s erudition feature prominently in the work—Anne in particular holds an open book in one hand while resting the other upon a globe, denoting both her literary ambitions as well as her awareness of, and perhaps eagerness to explore, the world beyond the confines of the parsonage at Haworth, situated in the Yorkshire Moors. At the same time, the work conveys a sense of the humbly conventional domesticity of their confined existence, given the fireplace glimpsed in the background at the right, and the chintz carpet laid upon the floor beneath the globe.


The present painting can trace its history to the estate of Peter and Kathleen Wick. Peter Wick (1920–2004) was Curator of Prints and Graphics at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later the director of Houghton Library at Harvard University. His wife Kathleen was a bookbinder and bibliophile. Their daughter, Kathleen Wick Galacar, was told by her parents that her maternal grandmother had purchased the painting in England prior to World War II.


Fig. 1. Patrick Branwell Brontë, The Brontë Sisters (Anne Brontë; Emily Brontë; Charlotte Brontë), c. 1834, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London.