Dos hermanas. Spanish Ladies, habited in the maja dress of Andalusia. Sketched at Seville 

 Dos hermanas. Spanish Ladies, habited in the maja dress of Andalusia. Sketched at Seville   

John Frederick Lewis, 1836 

Tinted lithograph 

Lewis travelled in Spain at the same time as Roberts, but they never met while in Spain. While Roberts primarily focused on architectural and urban subjects, Lewis dedicated an entire album of 27 lithographs (including the title page and dedication) to Spanish stock-types. As the title of this print indicates, the two women standing in an archway are sisters, wearing the typical Andalusian maja dress. One wears a shawl, which is described in Ford’s Handbook for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home (1845) as a type of mantilla ‘with no lace, made of black silk with a broad band of velvet. This, the veil of the Maja, the Gitana, peculiarly becomes their eye of diamond and their locks of jet. The Mantilla used to be suspended on a high comb, peineta, and then crossed over the bosom, which is, moreover, concealed by a pañuelo or handkerchief’.  

Prints of Spanish figures in traditional dress had been circulating since the late eighteenth century in so-called ‘costume books’. Lewis’s lithographs are larger in size and of a higher artistic quality, with figures that are more lively.   

Title: Dos hermanas. Spanish Ladies, habited in the maja dress of Andalusia. Sketched at Seville.   

Author/Artist: John Frederick Lewis (1804-1876). 

Technique and Material: Tinted lithograph, paper.  

Size: 400 x 290 mm (image), 550 x 370 mm (page).  

Published: Plate 5 from John Frederick Lewis, Sketches of Spain and Spanish character made during his tour in that country in the years 1833-4, London: F G Moon and John F Lewis, [1836]. 

Date: 1836.  

Marks and Inscriptions: on the plate, bottom left: ‘J. F. Lewis. 1836’; right: ‘Las Dos Hermanas’.  

Institution: Barry Ife Collection.