Label:
Created during Mancini's second trip to Great Britain in 1907/8, this painting portrays two grandchildren of Mancini's patron Mrs. Charles (Mary) Hunter. Mancini was fascinated with the potential effects of the children's white clothing, and brings them into brilliant high relief in the foreground with impossibly thick and aggressive clumps of impasto. The result is a startling and delightful innovation that suggests the conversion of light into solid form.

Provenance

Phyllis (Hunter) Williamson (Mrs. Frederick Charles Williamson, d. 1948); Williamson family collection, probably still in 1966 [1]. Sale, Phillips, London, June 19, 2001, no. 80; Vance N. Jordan (1943-2003), New York. 1. The portrait was probably still in the collection of the Williamson family when Cecchi published it in 1966 (according to Cecchi, at that time the family still owned Mancini's portraits of Frederick and Phyllis Williamson, the parents of the subjects of this portrait [Dario Cecchi, Antonio Mancini, Turin, 1966, p. 226, n. 1]).