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During the years around 1820, Eckersberg was busy painting portraits of the affluent citizens of Copenhagen. The artist's greatest patron during his young years, the merchant Mendel Levin Nathanson, commissioned two large family portraits. In one of the two works he painted Nathanson's two oldest daughters, Bella and Hanna, in a sparingly furnished drawing room with simple paneling and furniture, including a table bearing a parrot's cage.
The two girls are shown in uncompromising poses - one strictly frontal, the other strictly from the side - and as they look very much alike, it seems likely that the painter wished to create a variation on a theme.
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