When I was revamping my website about a year ago, I thought to find some suitable images to reflect the different aspects of my work.  To go with the pictures for sale (“Selected Inventory”) I chose Zoffany’s Tribuna, and for my consultative and appraisal services I used another version of the Siegert painting.

As you can see the Paisley painting turns out to be a somewhat reduced variant of the composition that I used – and in the reduction the meaning seems a little different.  With the full composition we can see that the child connoisseur is studying his or her father’s painting as he sits in another room working at another.  Without the context, the child is just another one of us,  earnestly trying to make sense of the work of a master.  Also, without the presence of the father at work in his studio,  the riding crop lying next to the child may suggest something other than the fact that it is one of the father’s studio props.