The Drawing Lesson, Two Girls in an Art Gallery by Adolphe Lalauze, circa 1880

About this sheet

Two little girls are absorbed in drawing in a room hung with framed pictures. The older girl, her long dark hair falling down her back, kneels on a low stool and leans into a sheet of paper propped against the carved back of a high chair, pencil in hand. Her fair-haired companion, perched on a wicker basket beside her, peers over her shoulder to follow the work. Above them two large paintings in heavy carved frames lean out from the wall, and on the checkered floor lie two discarded sheets, one showing a sketched head and the other a pair of small figures. The chair's barley-twist legs, the girls' full dresses and the tiled floor give the scene a crisp, domestic intimacy.

The etching is by Adolphe Lalauze, whose signature "Ad. Lalauze" is scratched into the plate at lower left. Lalauze was a prolific French etcher, admired for genre scenes of children, and he often used his own children as models. This composition is his "La Leçon de dessin" (The Drawing Lesson), etched in 1877 and published that year in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts; it was later chosen by Philip Gilbert Hamerton for his book Etching and Etchers, issued by Macmillan in London in 1880.

This is an original etching, not a reproduction of a painting: Lalauze composed and etched the scene himself. The lines are lively and varied, with dense crosshatching in the dark dress and the chair, and open, quick strokes in the wall and floor.

It would be a charming gift for an artist, a teacher or a young person learning to draw, and it looks well in a child's room or beside an easel in a studio.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.