Harmony

This picture is imbued with the spirit of the Aesthetic Movement, which flourished, as did the artist's career, in the 1870s. Various feminine and domestic arts are celebrated; of the group gathered around the piano one girl is reading, while a spinning wheel lies abandoned to one side. A statue of Apollo playing his lyre presides over the company, whose features owe something to the portraits of G.F. Watts.

Mary Gow was the sister of Andrew Carrick Gow, an artist, and subsequently married the genre painter Sydney Prior Hall.