The Calmady Children (Emily, 1818–?1906, and Laura Anne, 1820–1894) by Thomas Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence painted "The Calmady Children" in 1823. It belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The younger sister, Laura Anne, died at seventeen. Her older sister Emily lived on into the twentieth century. This portrait was their parents' way of holding onto them together, at the age when being together was the whole world.

Find the younger child's cheeks. Lawrence built that warmth in layers: warm ochre ground, then vermilion, then a final surface glaze of carmine. Contemporaries considered it his best-ever painting of a child's skin. Now look at the point where the sisters' bodies meet at center. Lawrence painted them as one form, not two separate figures. The hands and arms tangle so you cannot tell where one child ends and the other begins.

Lawrence was a child prodigy who supported his family with pastel portraits by age ten. He became president of the Royal Academy and the most sought-after portraitist of Regency England. His technical gift for capturing a living likeness was unmatched. But the Calmadys did not commission him for technique. They commissioned him to make a record of love.

The painting held what they could not keep. Laura Anne died in 1894. Emily carried her sister's image into old age. A portrait like this was not decoration. It was memory made permanent.