The Historian Animating The Mind of A Young Painter

An etched interior shows an older man in a dark coat seated at left, holding a book and speaking toward a young painter who sits at an easel with a brush raised to his lip. A canvas on the easel shows small figures, and a child sits on a chair at right beside shelves of objects. Pencils, papers and a sleeping dog lie scattered on the floor in the foreground.

Look closer: A sleeping dog lies on the floor in the lower right, near the scattered tools.

Artist

Thomas Rowlandson

Date

1784

Medium

Etching

Source

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Size

3655 × 2599 px

Credit (appreciated, not required for public-domain works): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959