* Twin sisters as a matched pair (mirrored faces, similar clothes, symmetry)

* Aristocratic titles as costume: “Lady” vs “Mrs.” (rank signalling in dress and posture)

* The portrait itself: an oil painting, likely half-length or seated, composed formally

* “By Millais”: Pre-Raphaelite visual grammar—high finish, crisp detail, luminous skin, saturated colour, botanical exactness

* Millais-era female portrait tropes: elaborate hair, smooth complexion, controlled expression, fabric texture rendered as virtuosity

* Christie’s as a stage: saleroom lighting, catalogues, lot numbers, paddles, murmuring bidders, the painting on an easel

* “Auctioned recently”: freshness/press heat—headline blurbs, social chatter, “record” talk

* “Record in rock-bottom prices”: a comic visual contradiction—grand frame, humiliating hammer price; prestige with deflation

* Gilded frame associations: ornate gilt, heavy moulding, institutional authority

* “Teak benches”: warm brown, polished slats, colonial/clubland feel; park or garden seating with a certain gentility

* Outdoor setting implied by benches: gravel path, clipped hedges, promenade, or a conservatory terrace

* Eating apples: bright skins, bite-marks, juice; a deliberately ordinary act against grand titles

* Apples as still-life props: round forms, gloss highlights, Victorian domestic painting echo

* “Bottle of pop”: glass bottle, crown cap, fizz, condensation; jaunty, slightly downmarket sparkle

* “Late Victorian chic”: high-collared silhouettes, fitted bodices, gloves, hats, parasols; the look of propriety with flair

* “Champagne” as Mrs Blackwater’s label: pale gold bubbles, flute glass, celebratory shimmer

* Her pronunciation “as though it were French”: a tiny performance—pursed lips, aspirational cosmopolitanism

* The comic pairing of “pop” vs “champagne”: two liquids, two class readings; same bottle in the mind’s eye, reframed by language

* Names as visuals: “Throbbing” (suggests pulse, heat, theatrical excess); “Blackwater” (darkness, depth, possibly maritime/river imagery)

* A mood of elegant absurdity: titled women picnicking like schoolgirls, while their “important” portrait has just been reduced to a bargain lot

* Implicit contrast of mediums: painted immortality (portrait) versus living scene (bench, fruit, bottles) as a small tableau vivant