This is a reduced version of, or a highly finished study for, a larger picture (43 x 66 inches), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889, no 236 – then much celebrated, now in New Zealand. Stone has used every clever trick in the painter’s box with our picture. One of these was to construct a dramatic narrative; Queen Victoria’s daughter and daughter-in-law, the Princesses Victoria and Alexandra, were photographed recreating this painting in a tableau vivant in 1894. The action is set within a closed and intimate theatrical space, with a backdrop of foliage, and the slender figures of the girls are emphasised by seating them on overlarge chairs. Like a photograph, the background is softly drawn but the figures are in sharp focus and well lit. A charming but simple story is thus completely told, in one image. The larger painting was very well received by the critics, who assumed that the girl on the right is older (one even called her the mother of the girl with the letter).

To quote the Art Journal, Stone was ‘at all times a charming painter, and this, together with his beautifully refined sense of colour, smoothness of texture and finish, have won for him a wide and enduring popularity.’