Oil on metal (over brown painted grisaille; a process picture). The metal is believed to be tin.

The BOAM version, with the man facing the viewer as he sharpens his quill at a window ledge, is derived from a version in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 1709) by Dou and dated 1671, see Hofstede de Groot, no. 137, pp. 391-92 & Smith 5a. The BOAM picture, showing a man sharpening his quill pen at a writing desk, is similar in subject-matter to the right-hand panel of a triptych, known as The Nursery which has been interpreted as representing Aristotle’s ideas about the three stages of human education. This work depicts the third stage, that is, the perfection of education through repeated practice. The BOAM has a nineteenth-century lithograph after this picture, produced by the Dresden lithographer, F. Hanfstengl: LDBOA1999.410. Information taken from Avery-Quash, S., & Handley, N., Catalogue of Oil Paintings Collection with Paintings in other Media Appended, London, 2000, cat. no. 8, pp. 35-37. It is known that the painting was included on an insurance list in 1982 but it is likely to have been acquired 1929-39 when the college was buying other works.