Two girls, perhaps sisters, form the starting point of this powerful composition in which Ville Jais-Nielsen demonstrates her skills as a modern painter. The picture revolves around the two girls’ placement within the space: one is seated, bending forward over a book, slightly rotated in relation to the picture plane, while the other leans over her in a position that accentuates the diagonal direction leading into the pictorial space. The placement of her arms contributes to stretching out the picture plane lengthwise in both directions.
The palette is pared back to a simple combination of white, blue and green with contrasts of orange, pink and black. The figures and background are both rendered in distinct, rhythmic brushstrokes, a technique introduced by the French painter Paul Cézanne, with whom Ville Jais-Nielsen may have become acquainted during her studies in Paris or by way of her two Nordic teachers, both of whom looked very much to France for inspiration. The subject matter itself – two figures
that look alike, creating a formal echo within the picture space – also connects the painting to a modernist tradition. In the following years, Ville Jais-Nielsen would gradually loosen up her formal idiom and take her interpretation of the portrait genre in new directions.
