3-017-010 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"For the Last Time", by Miss E. Osborn, in the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1864. Engraving of a painting. 'Question after question involuntarily arises in the mind as we look at these fair sisters, dressed in the deepest mourning, pausing before they enter the chamber-door. Of whom have they been bereaved? The drawn blinds of the house windows tell of one still unburied. The girls, whose eyes are red with weeping, have lost one near and dear. They are unattended by other members of the family in this last sad visit. They have no companion but their faithful dog...We still ask the picture, whose lifeless form it is that they will deck with those flowers - the lily, the rose, the azalea; all white, save a few violets all appropriate to scatter over the dead; all suitable emblems of mortality in their shortlived beauty and fragrance?...We cannot attempt to give a more explicit application to what the artist has purposely left indefinite...[The interior seems] to intimate that this is the house of some ancient family; and the idea that these tearful, sorrowing girls are its last living representatives may contribute to enhance the pathetic interest which their figures cannot fail to awaken'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.