The Travelling Companions

Augustus Egg painted this in 1862, when rail travel was still new enough to be a subject in itself. Two young women in identical grey silk sit facing each other in a cramped first-class compartment, near mirror images, one dozing and one reading, a posy of pink flowers between them. Through the window runs the coastline near Menton on the French Riviera, the kind of journey the new railways had suddenly put within reach of the comfortable middle class. Neither woman so much as glances at the famous view outside. Egg leaves it open whether they are two sisters or two sides of one person. It was among the last things he painted; in poor health, he died the next year, in 1863, while wintering in Algiers for his lungs.