
In Tate Britain
- Artist
- Unknown artist, Britain
- Medium
- Oil paint on wood
- Dimensions
- Support: 886 × 1723 mm
frame: 1074 × 1914 × 100 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented anonymously 1955
- Reference
- T00069
Summary
The painting depicts two young women sitting up in bed, fully dressed, each holding an infant. They are traditionally said to be sisters, although the different coloured eyes of the ladies and children show that they are not identical twins. The babies are swaddled in red christening robes.
The painting was known to be in the collection of Thomas Cholmondeley (pronounced 'Chumley'), the third son of Sir Hugh (died 1601) and Lady Mary Cholmondeley, who was an ancestor of the last Lord Delamere of Vale Royal, Cheshire. George Ormerod, in his description of the former monastery of Vale Royal (History of Cheshire, 1882, II, pp.154-5), noted 'In the passage leading to the sleeping rooms ... an antient painting of two ladies, said to be born and married on the same day, represented with children in their arms'. Although Ormerod gave detailed information about the Holford and Cholmondeley family pedigrees he made no attempt to identify the sitters in this portrait. The style of the painting would seem to date it to c.1600-10, and it might represent daughters or nieces of Sir Hugh and Lady Mary Cholmondeley; there is nothing in the genealogical tables published by Ormerod either to support or refute the assumption that the sitters were twins. They might only have married into the Cholmondeley family and the fact that they shared the same birthday could be explained as pure coincidence. Nevertheless, they share a strong resemblance.
Family group portraits of this type were popular in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. Traditionally employing emblems or symbols to show identity and status, they rarely offered psychological insights into the sitters. The pose is not known to have been used in any other British painting, but was frequently seen in tomb sculpture. John Hopkins (1991) suggests that the portrait may show two sisters, Lettice Grosvenor (1585-1612) and Mary Calveley (died 1616), who were the daughters of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley (1552-1601) and Mary Holford (1563-1625). The evidence is not definitive, however, and the identities of the sitters, like that of the painter, remain a mystery.
Further reading:
John T. Hopkins, '"Such a Twin Likeness there was in the Pair": An Investigation into the Painting of the Cholmondeley Sisters', reprinted from Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire [for the Year 1991], vol.141, pp.1-37, reproduced opposite p.1
Terry Riggs
March 1998
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Display caption
According to the inscription (bottom left), this painting shows ‘Two Ladies of the Cholmondeley Family, Who were born the same day, Married the same day, And brought to Bed [gave birth] the same day’. To mark this dynastic event, they are formally presented in bed, their babies wrapped in scarlet fabric. Identical at a superficial glance, the lace, jewellery and eye colours of the ladies and infants are in fact carefully differentiated. The format echoes tomb sculpture of the period. The women, whose precise identities are unclear, were probably painted by an artist based in Chester, near the Cholmondeley estates.
Gallery label, February 2016
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Features
-
Essay
The Cholmondeley Ladies c.1600–1610: By British School 17th Century
Read technical information about this painting resulting from examination and scientific analysis by conservators and conservation scientists at Tate
-
Art Term
Elizabethan
Elizabethan refers to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603 which saw a flowering of the arts …
-
Tate Etc
My Tate ladies
Tate Etc. invited the fashion designer Erdem on a special tour Tate Britain, where he selected his favourite paintings of …
-
Tate Etc
Poem of the month: The Cholmondeley Ladies
This February Jean Spackland presents her poem The Cholmondeley Ladies based on the painting of the same name attributed to …
-
Tate Etc
The transcendence of the image: Leonora Carrington
A visit to the Tate not only prompts a journey to track down the Surrealist painter Leonora Carringotn at her …
-
Tate Etc
The master chameleon: Water
In the small town of Stykkishólmur, Iceland, Roni Horn has created a community centre that houses two installations, the second …
-
Tate Etc
The perception of symmetry
Michael Bird on notions of how symmetry, the Doppelgänger, duality and mirror images have played a part in the way …
Explore
- clothing and personal items(5,884)
- baby(525)
- groups(311)
- family(4,136)
-
- mother and child(398)
You might like
-
Unknown artist, Britain Portrait of Anne Wortley, Later Lady Morton
c.1620 -
Robert Peake Lady Anne Pope
1615 -
Unknown artist, Britain Portrait of a Lady, Called Elizabeth, Lady Tanfield
1615 -
Paul Van Somer Lady Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent
c.1619 -
Cornelius Johnson Portrait of Susanna Temple, Later Lady Lister
1620 -
Unknown artist, Britain Gertrude Sadler, Lady Aston
c.1620–3 -
Marcus Gheeraerts II Portrait of Mary Rogers, Lady Harington
1592 -
Cornelius Johnson Portrait of an Unknown Lady
1629 -
David Des Granges The Saltonstall Family
c.1636–7 -
Attributed to Robert Peake Lady Elizabeth Pope
c.1615 -
Marcus Gheeraerts II Portrait of a Woman in Red
1620 -
Unknown artist, Britain Portrait of a Lady
1576 -
Unknown artist, Britain Portrait of Sir Thomas Pope, Later 3rd Earl of Downe
c.1635 -
Adam de Colone Portrait of Lady Margaret Livingstone, 2nd Countess of Wigtown
1625 -
Unknown artist, Britain An Allegory of Man
1596 or after