A Childhood Idyll

Paris held its Universal Exhibition in 1900, and this canvas, finished that same year, was shown there on loan from the New York dealers Knoedler, who had already bought it. Bouguereau first sold it to the dealers Tooth and Sons, whose stock book lists it simply as The two sisters. By December it had crossed the Atlantic, and in May 1901 it went to Lawrence Phipps of Pittsburgh, a vice president of Carnegie Steel. That was the year Carnegie's company was sold to form U.S. Steel. Phipps retired, moved to Denver, and later sat in the United States Senate for Colorado. In the picture the older girl plays a small pipe while the younger one leans against her and watches, both barefoot on a rough hillside. The painting stayed with Phipps and then his family foundation, which gave it to the Denver Art Museum in 1958, the year he died.