Augustus Egg is the subject of this week’s Post: a friend mentioned him when we were talking about our love of domestic interiors (FW Elwell!); Evelyn Waugh loved him; and he was a friend of Wilkie Collins, who has been sustaining us during these turbulent weeks. First of all Egg’s most famous painting, two women in a railway carriage in the south of France in 1862 (pleasingly, they are wearing Persephone grey). The Travelling Companions is at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. It has been suggested that the painting is an allegory on idleness and industry; but it may just show two sisters who are wearing the same colour; and one happens to be having a doze and the other happens to be reading; but it is quite odd that their hats – are those hats? – are identical, so maybe they are meant to represent two sides of a coin in some way.