Mrs Paine and her Daughters

When Lever purchased this painting in 1918 it carried the title ‘Portraits of the Misses Paine’. Mrs Paine, who is seen on the left supervising her daughters at the piano, had been painted out of the picture and would not have been visible to Lever at all. The painting was once owned by art dealer CJ Wertheimer. He felt that a picture of two beautiful young girls was worth far more on the market than a picture of two beautiful young girls and an elderly matron, and so he had Mrs Paine removed. In 1935, the Lady Lever Trustees took the decision to remove the over painting and restored the picture to Reynolds’s original composition.