Jan Steen
(Dutch, 1626-1679)
[800x]
The Drawing Lesson (c.1665
Oil on panel. The Getty Center.
In this allegory of the status of the artist and the nature of his profession, a male artist instructs two pupils: a young boy and a fashionably dressed young woman.
A plaster cast of a sculpture of a nude male seems to be the object of the day’s exercise in how to draw, but the studio is filled with many other props and materials.