"The world treats your children as you have treated them," Neel once observed. And when she came to paint children, she was always concerned to treat them as equals. She also had some tricks to keep their attention. "She would suddenly miaow like a cat to keep the children interested while they were sitting," says Als. "I love this painting as a kind of perversion of a Sunday-school portrait. There is a kind of fierceness to the girls. Alice liked that. She wanted girls who would stand up to the challenge of being painted." [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/apr/29/the-people-of-harlem-as-painted-by-alice-neel-in-pictures]