This is one of four calotypes of young girls with David Octavius Hill’s dog, a terrier pup called Brownie. The girls depicted are Sophia Finlay – Hill’s great-niece – and Harriet Farnie, the younger of two sisters. Sleeping children were a recurring theme in nineteenth-century art, as it played on the Victorian fascination with childhood innocence and death. The image is clear and well-defined, which means that the girls must have sat very still for anything from several seconds up to a minute. Presumably the dog had been played with until it collapsed in exhaustion. Hill later called this picture ‘The Sleepers’ and added ‘Brownie, my stolen and lamented terrier pup’.