Portrait of "The Peris of the North," 1845

A stipple engraving of "The Peris of the North" by J. Thomson after a drawing by J. Hayter, published by Fisher, Son & Co, 1845.

Image shows a line drawing within a stretched octagonal frame of two young women. They are depicted in profile in a half-length portrait. The woman closest to the foreground, Elizabeth, who takes up most of the image, wears a dress with voluminous off-the-shoulder sleeves and a pearl necklace. Her hair is pinned back with tumbling curls framing her face as she looks down to read the book she holds. Only the face of the second woman, Isabella, can be seen as she is positioned behind the first, her hair also pinned up and kept off her face with ribbons. To the right, in the background, there is a decorative column adorned with flowers. Small italic text below the image to the left reads: ‘Drawn by J. Hayter,' and to the right: ‘Engraved by J Thomson’. Larger italic scroll to the centre reads ‘The Peris of the North’ with smaller text below ‘Fisher, Son & Co. London & Paris 1845’.

The print was identified in 2009 by Dr Adam White of Lotherton Hall as a joint portrait of sisters Mary Isabella Trench Gascoigne (1810-1891) and Elizabeth Trench Gascoigne (later Baroness Ashtown, 1812-1893), whose father, Richard Oliver Gascoigne, bought Lotherton Hall, a country house near Aberford in West Yorkshire (now one of nine sites held by the Leeds Museums & Galleries group), in 1825. John Hayter’s original drawing remained in possession of the Gascoigne family, and the two sisters appear in another painting of all four Gascoigne children at Lotherton Hall c.1820. Following their father’s death, the then-unmarried sisters inherited the estate as both their brothers had passed away. It is generally accepted that both sisters had an interest in hobbies more commonly attributed to men at the time: photography, stained-glass and woodturning, with remnants of their stained-glass work found at another of their estates, Parlington Hall. Isabella also authored a book on woodturning under a male pseudonym. As young women, they showed no interest in marriage: it was several years after their father’s death that they eventually would.

The title of this particular print references ‘Peri’, a Persian folklore term meaning a beautiful fairy-like creature, with the ‘North’ alluding to the sisters’ Yorkshire heritage. It was not unusual in the early 1800s for portraits to be given generalised titles to increase selling opportunities. Another version of the portrait was published earlier in 1836, entitled "The Sisters."

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