"The Drawing Lesson": A Master Correcting a Pupil's Drawing

A Dutch boy who wanted to be a painter in Steen's day began with drawing. He was placed with a master, usually for several years, and spent the first of them copying prints and plaster casts until his hand could be trusted with colour. This small panel, barely 24 centimetres high, shows that stage. The master leans over the table and corrects the boy's sheet himself, while the pupil stands close at his shoulder, hat in hand, watching. Around them are the tools of the trade, an open book by the window, a palette hanging on the wall and, on the shelf above, a plaster statuette of a standing nude, the kind of model a beginner drew again and again. Steen painted it around 1665 or 1666. He came back to the subject more than once, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles owns a larger, busier version with a second pupil, a young woman, in the studio. Here there are only the two of them and one drawing.