AUGUSTUS LEOPOLD EGG (BRITISH 1816-1863)THE PALMER-LOVELL FAMILY IN AN INTERIOROil on canvas85 x 104cm (33¼ x 40¾ in.)Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by Reverend Palmer-Lovell, and thence by descentWith Richard Green, London, 1995Private UK Collection, acquired from the above in 2001This is one of Egg's most detailed portraits including vivid and sympathetic portrayals of each of the Palmer-Lovell family members and the family's governess. The Reverend George Thomas Palmer (b. 1802) watches his wife Clarissa Maria Lovell playing the piano while their daughter Georgina, who is dressed in green, dances and Christina, the younger child dressed in white, reaches out to join her. This painting is traditionally known as Homage to Vermeer. Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) now considered one of the greatest seventeenth century masters of the Low Countries was largely forgotten until the mid-nineteenth century. His rediscovery may have prompted Egg's tribute. The pose of the wife is derived from Vermeer's famous work Woman at the virginals in the National Gallery in London which Egg may well have copied as a student. This work is a classic example of Vermeer's paeans to the sanctity of the Dutch home. Seventeenth century Holland and Victorian Britain shared a belief in the purity of the home being a sign of the strength and virtue of the nation as a whole.The furniture and the paintings hung on the richly decorated red-flock wall behind the figures are thought to have been wedding presents. Two of them bear tablets with the artists' names on them; the work behind Mrs Palmer-Lovell is by Philippe de Loutherberg; the work to the right, portraying a horseman, is by Abraham Cooper. Egg often included paintings in the background of his compositions in order to suggest allegorical readings. In Past and Present (Tate Gallery), Egg included Clarkson Stanfield's The Shipwreck, the great success of the Royal Academy exhibition of 1856, not only to indicate the wealth and comfort of the family portrayed but also its impending dissolution because of the wife's infidelity. In the present work Arcadian landscapes, aristocratic horseman and happy children's games appear in the paintings behind the sitters denoting the taste and contentment of this home. In many ways, one can see this work as a pendant to the Tate picture, the tale of a happy family contrasted to he sad fate of Past and Present.