3-009-055 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: "A Confession", by E. J. Aubert, 1862. '...two young and beautiful females, intimate friends or companions, being together, and the one involuntarily compelled to confide in the other some newly-formed attachment of a graver kind than friendship, or, more probably, being surprised into the avowal of the love secret by the womanly penetration and tact of her friend...[Aubert] takes us back to ancient Greece, and presents us with two Ionian maidens, draped like the Elgin marbles, walking on a shore of the blue Aegaean, bidding us, as it were, think of Sapphos and Helens, Penelopes and Ariadnes...[He] has given very suitable refinement to the forms; and the somewhat vague tone and opaline colour, though short of the force and effectiveness of nature, may be accepted as in some sort in keeping with dim antiquity and poetical sentiment...The livelier temperament of the slightly-bantering fair girl, and graver, more passionate expression of the dark lady, are perfectly discriminated. On a box will be seen the Greek word [for] "gold," which applies to the receptacle containing the gold thread with which the dark lady is embroidering, and, by the fanciful, may be construed to refer to the thread of her "confession".' From "Illustrated London News", 1862.