Two women seated side by side, likely sisters, are the subject of this sixth plate daguerreotype attributed to Edward Tompkins Whitney, presented in its leather case. No photographer's imprint is visible on the plate itself. Whitney learned the daguerreotype process in New York City in 1844 under Martin M. Lawrence and operated a prominent gallery in Rochester through the 1850s, placing this sitting within that period.

Both women wear dark silk dresses with wide white lace collars, their hair parted center and worked into long ringlets. The woman at left wears drop earrings and a small brooch at her throat, while her companion wears a matching brooch pinned within her collar's points. Both sit with hands folded in their laps atop full skirts, one resting an arm against a visible chair back between them.

Whitney established his career in Rochester, New York, first in partnership with Thomas Mercer from 1845 to 1849, then independently and later with C.P. Denney, operating out of the Gould Block on State Street through the mid 1850s. He organized the first American convention for the promotion and regulation of the daguerreian art in 1848 and served as chairman of the New York State Daguerreian Association in 1851, making him one of the more historically documented practitioners of the process in upstate New York.

The case is bound in leather embossed with a scrolling floral design on both exterior panels, and the plate sits within a gilt brass mat with a woven rope pattern border, opposite an embossed velvet pad.