The subjects of this haunting portrait are Frances Byng-Stamper (left) and her sister Caroline Lucas. It was painted when Cedric Morris was trying to get together an exhibition of contemporary Welsh art. Frances, who lived at Manorbier Castle in Pembrokeshire, was the exhibition’s secretary. Morris was himself an upper middle class bohemian, but his relations with the mostly wealthy and anglicised members of the exhibition committee were edgy, and he gave this work the alternative title of 'The English Upper Classes'. Today Morris is best remembered for his flower paintings, but his portraits are perhaps his most distinctive and radical achievement. While not caricatures, they often simplify and sometimes exaggerate the features to intensify the psychological impact. They owe more to French and German art of the 1910s and 1920s than to British painting, and they provoked strong reactions. The sisters rejected this painting, and the opening of an exhibition of Morris’s portraits in London in 1938 degenerated into a brawl. For all Morris’s antipathy to the sisters, they were significant figures in the mid-century British art world. Frances was a long-term committee member of the Contemporary Art Society for Wales (which developed out of the 1935 exhibition). Caroline was a painter, sculptor and printmaker. Frances left Manorbier in 1939 and moved with her sister to Lewes in Sussex. There they established the Miller’s Gallery, showing the work of Matisse, Roualt and Duncan Grant as well as Lucas's own. The sisters founded the Miller's Press in 1945 to encourage artists to work in color lithography, and commissioned prints by a number of artists including Vanessa Bell, David Jones, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. (http://artuk.org/discover/artworks/two-sisters-116911/search/actor:morris-cedric-lockwood-18891982/page/1/view_as/grid)