Giacomo Francesco Cipper, also known as 'Il Todeschini' (literally 'the little German'), was born in Feldkirch, Western Austria, but spent most of his career in Northern Italy. Cipper's work is characterised by his grinning figures and focus on scenes of everyday life. The idea of presenting poor and marginal figures life size, in a partly sympathetic, partly comic and grotesque fashion, was pioneered by Velazquez and made popular throughout Europe by Murillo (two of whose famous urchin scenes in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich were acquired in 1698 by the Elector Maximilian II Emanuel).

This portrait of an artist in his studio is one of a set of four paintings by Cipper, first recorded in an inventory of pictures at Kensington Palace during the reign of George III. The painting must have been one of the artist's final works as it is signed and dated 1736, the year of his death. Some of the signature is now illegible but it was recorded in its entirety in an inventory compiled by Richard Redgrave in 1871. While it has been suggested that the figure of the artist might be a self-portrait, comparison between this work and other self-portraits by Cipper would intimate that it is more likely to be a generic type – a theory supported by the fact that the other paintings in the set (RCIN 402530, 402535 and 402539) present humble figures engaged in similarly ordinary and everyday pastimes: playing cards, making music and de-lousing each other's hair.

In the centre of the painting an artist is working on a canvas surrounded by a number of people. On the left, an assistant grinds paint on a stone slab with a two-handed muller, while on the right, two young boys, probably apprentices, draw in loose-leaf portfolios. Above them, a woman holding a distaff (used for spinning and included in many paintings by Cipper) peers around the side of the artist's easel, shadowing her eyes with her hand. On the table in the foreground, a small dog lies curled up on a table beside the artist's tools: a palette knife, brushes, a mixing pot, a jar of medium or thinner and a box on which the artist rests his brushes.

The figure on the artist's virtual canvas appears to be based on the figure of the assistant on the left, the artist changing his sitter's muller into a crutch in his final painting. This interesting juxtaposition between the real and the painted likeness may have been intended to emphasise the artist's ability not only to record nature but to transform it through the medium of paint.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016