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Leopold Augustus Egg
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| This painting is set several
years later than the first one. The girls are grown now, yet in impoverished
circumstances. We are to assume (as Egg's note confirms) that the
father is now dead. The clothing of the daughters is much altered
now, to plain cloth and plain colors. Indeed, the black and
white color scheme suggests the absolute, binary nature of ethical dilemmas
and their resolution.
Note that the two small paintings of the mother and father from the first painting survive. The mother's painting is cast in deep shadow and a chair is before it, which would keep the sitter's back to the painting. The father's painting is behind the "vanity" mirror on the small table. That the "vanity" mirror is turned over to check excessive self-admiration sugggests that the father's lesson has been taken to heart. Thus we see not only the fate of the adulterous woman, but the utter degradation and humiliation she wreaks upon her children. The oldest daughter is--as we note in the final painting--staring at the same moon that her mother is.
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