Two young women walking

This attractive study has every appearance of having been painted by Watts as a young man in Italy. In 1843, at the age of twenty-six, he had won a £300 premium in the first of the Westminster Hall competitions with his cartoon of Caractacus led in Triumph through the Streets of Rome. This enabled him to travel, and he spent the greater part of the next three and a half years based in Florence as the guest of Lord Holland, British Minister at the Court of Tuscany, and his vivacious wife, Augusta. If Watts is indeed the picture's author, it might represent two of the Hollands' English visitors, or members of the large expatriate community.

We are grateful to Richard Jefferies, Curator of the Watts Gallery, Compton, for his help in the preparation of this catalogue entry.