Lot Essay
On stylistic grounds we may date these pictures and their frames to circa 1890. The 1891 census lists amongst the Thomas family living at Eyhorne, in the parish of Hollingbourne in Kent, two girls aged within a year of one another: Ella and Ethel, aged 8 and 7. There were many artists in this prolific Kentish family, but from the census and other records we have attributed these portraits to one exhibiting at the right time that gave his address to the Royal Society of British Artists as 'Hollingbourne House' in Chobham, Surrey.