Portraits That Seem to Talk

A Victorian portrait house of four rooms, where faces on the walls seem ready to talk. Top left, a bearded painter in a red beret and a smock gestures at an empty frame on a stand while two gentlemen and a small dog watch. Top right, a woman in an apron holds a rose by an iron garden gate with a winding path and roses climbing the walls. Bottom left, a man in a brown coat stands under a large family portrait in a gold frame, among oval portraits on red wallpaper. At the bottom right, a man in a blue coat holding a quill stands at a lectern in a room of speech scrolls, lips and three framed portraits. A checkered floor, a green brick path, patchwork tiles and a striped rug sit under the four rooms like separate frames.