ベラとハンナ。M・L・ナタンソンの長女たち

The 1810s had been brutal for Denmark. The British had bombarded Copenhagen, the state went bankrupt, and the country lost Norway. Out of that hard decade came a quiet flowering of Danish painting, and this is one of its first great portraits. The man who commissioned it, Mendel Levin Nathanson, was a merchant and a leader of Copenhagen's Jewish community who had campaigned for the rights that Danish Jews finally won in 1814. He hired Eckersberg to paint his two eldest daughters at home. Bella sits in profile, Hanna stands and looks straight out at us, both dressed in the newest fashion. In the corner hangs a caged bird, a small note about two young unmarried women waiting inside a comfortable house for their lives to begin.