Stealing the keys indistinctly signed 'M Stone' (lower right) oil on canvas 32.5 x 46 cm. (12 3/4 x 18 in.)
Footnotes
This is probably a study for the Royal Academy exhibit Stealing the keys, 1866, no. 246, which was accompanied by the following lines (source unknown):
"It was already day. In sooth we were in sad plighte; our poor father a prisoner in his own house, the which was in the hands of the brutal Roundhead soldiery. No way was to free him, save by good fortune we mighte get the keys of his prison chamber before that the prisoners should waken after their orgies. . . . This my sister took upon herself to do, our good, faithful Margery quaking in the doorway."
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