Photos/images: Jonathan Russell/Sotheby’s.

• Title(s): The Visit (Academy Notes 1882, p60; The Athenæum, 27 May 1882, p673); The visit (Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, 1882); Little Visitors (The Graphic [newspaper] Christmas Edition, 1883).
• Description: Two young children dressed in black, the hats and collars lace trimmed, sit on a sofa or bench-seat facing the viewer, a cloth bearing an embroidered crown and other designs draped over the back of the seat, in the background an ornate window with roundel and coloured glass; painting age-darkened, obscuring original colours.
• Media: oil on canvas (Sotheby’s, 2023).
• Dimensions: “unframed: 71.5 x 91.5 cm.; 28¼ x 36 in. / framed: 86 x 106 cm.; 33¾ x 41¾ in.” (Sotheby’s, 2023.)
• Signature/date/other text: “signed and dated lower right: Annie L. Robinson / 1882” (Sotheby’s, 2023).
• History:
  • 1882 – Signed and dated.
  • 1882 – Exhibited Royal Academy, no. 704 (Academy Notes 1882, p60, The Athenæum, 27 May 1882, p673).
  • 1883 – Coloured ‘chromolithograph’ print in The Graphic Christmas Edition, 1883, “Miss. Annie L. Robinson … Little Visitors”.
  • 2023 Jul 7 – Auctioned Sotheby’s, London, lot 404, “Property from a Norwegian Private Collection”, sold: hammer £42,000, premium £53,340. (Sotheby’s, 2023.)
• Location: ?

The Athenæum, 27 May 1882, p673:

The Visit (704) of Miss A. L. Robinson, a pretty but somewhat Hals-like¹ picture of two little girls dressed in black and grey seated on a blue sofa², before white and gold embroidery, may be classed with the ‘Cara Nona’ of Signor Bellei,³ but the subject is pleasanter and the artist’s touch finer. The demure self-restraint of the children is given with quaint and admirable humour; each infant is eager to burst into talk.

Notes:

1. Frans Hals (1580-1666) typically painted portraits of people in dark clothes with lace frills against a dark background.
2. The blueness of the sofa was not obvious in the picture when at auction due to age-related discolouration, but is evident in the 1883 Illustrated London News picture (see below).
3. Gaetano Bellei (1857-1922) was a figurative artist whose subjects were typically painted in animated, hunoresque poses. The work Cara Nonna (Italian: ‘Dear Grandma’) was sold at auction 19 Nov 2024, Sworder’s, Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex.

The condition report from Sotherby’s 2023 auction reads “The canvas has been lined. The paint surface is dirty in areas and there is pressed craquelure. Paint loss to certain sections mostly towards the lower right hand corner which appears to have bee retouched. Ultraviolet light reveals a layer of opaque varnish. There is evidence of retouching to the dresses, gloves, hats, and sections of the background, as well as some retouching to to address the areas of craquelure. The varnish has yellowed slightly.”

There are similarities, not exact but very close, in the window glass in this and Annie’s The Letter, adding weight to the argument that the latter is The Reading Girl, a painting mentioned in a newspaper article of the time [Manchester Evening News, 23 Nov 1883, p2, col. 2.] dates to c. 1883.

Left: The Letter / Right: The Visit.

Below is a colour illustration from The Graphic Christmas Edition, 1883 (source: private collection). The Sotheby’s sales page, Jun 2023, comments on the age-related darkening of the work currently. The 1883 illustration shows some of the detail and colouring more clearly.

Photos: donated by owner.

---

Page last updated 19 Oct 2025.