Adolph von Menzel

In the last years of his life, Adolph von Menzel drew people from a close range, focusing on heads, accessories, and human features. This drawing depicts the artist’s studio as a place in which people from different social levels interact. The mysterious man behind the artist (perhaps a rustic country gentleman?) begins a succession of stares: from his own toward the artist to the artist’s toward the yawning woman. To the left and seemingly beyond their concern, a young woman at the height of fashion adjusts her large feathered hat with some difficulty as she looks into an unseen mirror. A comparison is posed between the youth and age of the two elaborately hated women. Von Menzel expertly suggests the subtleties of urban social interaction with the briefest of gestures.