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Dimensions: 355 by 476mm

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Provenance: Sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 November 1965, lot 18.

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Notes: As James Byam Shaw noted in his catalogue of drawings by Giandomenico, the majority of the scenes of contemporary life are finished pictorial compositions like this one, in pen and ink, within drawn framing lines, and the only date on them, when it occurs, is 1791 (see J. Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 47). Byam Shaw, writing about the drawing The School, also dated 1791, says that in that year, Giandomenico 'was still at his best as a draughtsman, and these pictorial commentaries, which catch something of the spirit of the age and are at times mildly satirical, are a source of considerable interest to the historian and sociologist as well as of pleasure to the amateur of art.' (See J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York 1987, p. 199, no. 164, reproduced). Even though the same subject does occasionally recur in a painting by the artist, it is clear that Giandomenico made these drawings as independent works of art for collectors.