Study of women and children in an interior

The present drawing may be related to a brown wash drawing in the Fitzwilliam Museum known as Two women and two children (see P. Jaffé, Drawings by George Romney from the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Cambridge, 1977, no. 107, pl. 48), which depicts two women standing over a small girl seated on the left, with another young figure indicated between them. If so, it was probably executed circa 1793, after Romney escaped from London to work at Pine Apple Place, his 'little villa' at Hampstead, where he made many studies of women and children, and of children at play, describing them as 'innocent little spirits' who give 'more soft delight to the mind than I can describe to soften the steps down declining life' (quoted in Jaffé, op.cit., p. 62).