Signed with the artist’s monogram u.r.: CH

Oil on panel, 29 by 35.5 cm

Provenance: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1883, no.157

This depiction of Halkerston’s own studio in early 1880s Edinburgh is a satisfyingly unselfconscious portrayal of the workplace of a busy artist, replete with a stack of unfinished works in progress on the easel. The view through the window offers a glimpse of Edinburgh’s rooftops towards buildings that are now part of the city’s university. Halkerston was an artist who enjoyed a notable reputation for his interior scenes, genre subjects and still lifes, many of which are influenced by the work of the Dutch Old Masters of the seventeenth century. He was a prolific exhibitor, showing some sixty three works at the Royal Scottish Academy from the mid nineteenth century until his death in 1899.