An Interesting Story

Two children curl up together over a wide open book, so absorbed in its pages that nothing around them seems to matter. The older girl, her golden hair falling loose, appears to be reading aloud, while the smaller child stares hard at the words as if trying to catch every one. Gentle light drifts in from the window behind them, warming their faces and glowing across the yellow cushions where they nestle. Anyone who has read a story to a younger sibling or child will recognize the feeling in this scene, that hush that falls when a good tale takes hold.

The painting comes from Laura Muntz Lyall, a Canadian artist who built her reputation on tender pictures of children and mothers. She studied in Europe and picked up the soft, feathery brushwork of Impressionism, which shows here in the blurred edges and the way the light seems to breathe across the canvas. Making a career as a woman artist in the 1890s took real determination, and Muntz Lyall managed it, winning admiration in Canada and overseas alike. "An Interesting Story," painted in 1898, remains among her best known works, partly because she captured the small truths of childhood honestly, never dipping into sweetness for its own sake.