The right-hand figure in Study of Two Young Girls is probably Bridget Sarah Bishop, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Gwen John’s Slade friend Louise Salaman and the subject of an unfinished portrait in oils. She began sitting for John in March 1929, and continued ‘one or two afternoons a week’ for the rest of the month. In an interview with Cecily Langdale on 13 January 1983, Bishop (then Mrs J. Latimer) said that John did ‘quite a lot of drawings’ during her sittings. The figure’s bob-cut hairstyle, the rounded ends of the eyebrows and the stub nose are the same as those in a drawing of Bishop. Bishop did not mention sitting with another model, however. It is uncertain who the other figure is in Study of Two Young Girls. They appear intimately related in this drawing: Bishop stands close behind the second figure and rests her hands on their arms, even as both figures look directly out of the picture, apparently at ease with one another.

This drawing was perhaps conceived in preparation for an unrealised picture. John repeated the composition at least once, but in a far less resolved form in which the faces and clothing are only loosely outlined. In that drawing, the composition differs slightly: the figure behind places only her left hand on the figure in front, and her right hand rests in her lap.

An inscription at the lower left-hand corner of Study of Two Young Girls—possibly ‘BL’, as in ‘black’, or ‘23’—is a colour or tone note. The ‘B’ is distinctively formed of a stylised downward line, which is separate from the other part of the letter. Such colour notes appear copiously in other charcoal studies by John, especially in church scenes (of praying nuns, orphan children, etc.). It may instead be a numerical code: the art historian Mary Taubman has described how, ‘For the identification of tones [John] had devised a system based on the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in various combinations’. Gwen’s brother Augustus John referred to her ‘methodicity’; she briefly trained with Whistler and developed a refined tonal technique, in which a narrow range of precisely graded colours was used to construct areas of light and shade. Colour notes, scribbled on a preparatory drawing, would be used later to compose gouaches or oil paintings. Though apparently not in this case.

Study of Two Young Girls was in the possession of Gwen John at the time of her death. Her estate was represented by Matthiesen Gallery, London, between 1940 and its closure in 1963, and that gallery catalogued her work. Paintings and drawings were ascribed P.J. and E.J. numbers respectively. Study of Two Young Girls was catalogued as E.J. 416 and was probably included in Matthiesen’s Memorial Exhibition of Gwen John in 1946 under the title ‘Half Length Study of Two Sisters, Full Face’. The reference number E.J. 416 appears on a Faerber and Maison label on the backboard. Faerber and Maison handled John’s work between 1963—when that company began to represent John’s estate—and 1973—when it ceased trading. The drawing was sold by The Piccadilly Gallery in 1974, and it has not been offered for sale since that time.