The painting is signed "Lucien Pissarro 1887" on the bottom-left corner in dark green-blue paint. The signature is painted wet-over-dry (fig. 1).

There are minimal markings or inscriptions on the back of the painting. Brown paper tape covers half the width of the stretcher bars on all four sides. The tape extends over the tacking margins and the front of the painting. A lining canvas covers the back of the canvas. The only inscriptions visible are the IMA’s accession number, “1995.100,” seen on the top-right corner in red; a number written on a paper label in the middle of the top horizontal member; and number “65” printed on an orange piece of paper attached to the right vertical member. There are also remnants of red wax seals on the stretcher (zoom into fig. 2 to see inscriptions).

In 1884, the Pissarro family moved from Pontoise to Éragny-sur-Epte, where Interior of the Studio would be painted three years later (fig. 3). Lucien’s painting career began around this time, and he lived in this house on and off until he made a permanent move to England in 1890. Although Lucien was inclined toward painting from a young age, his mother, Julie, wanted a practical career for her son. He was first sent to Paris to work as a clerk and then to London in 1883 to live with his uncle Phineas Isaacson and learn English. Julie thought this would benefit a possible future career in business. He would later return to London around 1887 at the age of 24 to apprentice at a printing press, and in 1894, he founded his own press, called the Éragny Press after Éragny-sur-Epte.¹

In this painting, Lucien depicts his brother Georges, then aged 16, at an easel inside the Pissarro house where his father had a studio on the second floor. The window’s vertical mullion cuts the composition in half. On the left is a table with a jardiniere on top crowded together with an easel, while on the right, the composition opens, and the focus is on the back-lit boy. Outside the window, one can just make out the linear structure of the wall that sectioned off the garden from the neighbour’s house beyond. It looks out on the same scene depicted in Camille’s The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Éragny, painted just a year earlier in the same location (fig. 4). Some of the objects in the room are known. The hat hanging on the wall on the left is Camille’s. Camille also made the tiles depicting peasants picking apples, which are set into the jardiniere on the table.² There is also photographic documentation of the chair, which was brought to Camillle’s next studio, as well as the iron bars of the shallow balcony outside the window.³

The painting has four preparatory works associated with it. There are three drawings and one painting, Corner of the Studio (Coin d’atelier) (fig. 5). The composition is very similar to that of the IMA work except for one notable difference. In this painting, the table is placed further to the right blocking Georges’s leg. It is covered with a white tablecloth instead of red, and on it sit a copper tea pot, vase, bowl of fruit, and a ceramic cow. The ceramic cow remained in the family and appears in a photograph of Lucien’s daughter Orovida.⁵ Without the tall jardiniere, the table in the background is made more visible. In the IMA work, Lucien has also shortened Georges’s hair, extended the legs of the chair, and added more papers pinned to the wall on the right-hand side.

During the 1996 treatment of this painting, a different composition was found by X-radiography (fig. 6). It was discovered that Lucien had initially painted the table as shown in his earlier sketch. The composition underneath is almost identical to that of Corner of the Studio (Coin d’atelier), described in the Historical Context section above. David Miller suspected this during his assessment, as he observed the paint had different texture and more instability in the lower-left corner.¹⁰

Translucent beige (fig. 7)

The ground is applied in one layer, observed in cross section (see Sample a, fig. 7). Under magnification in areas where the ground is visible, the peaks of the canvas are bare, indicating that the ground may have been abraded to create a smooth painting surface (fig. 8). Whether or not the ground has been commercially applied is inconclusive. It was found to be very thin and translucent, making it difficult to discern whether it extends to the edge of the canvas.¹⁵

The ground is composed of chalk and glue. Calcium was detected with SEM-EDX, indicating a chalk priming layer (figs. 9–11). Gelatin medium was confirmed with FTIR analysis.¹⁶

The ground has not fully filled the interstices of the canvas weave, leaving the texture of the weave slightly visible through the paint layers above (fig. 12).

Lucien laid in the main compositional elements of this painting with medium-sized brushstrokes separated by a space between. This initial underlayer can be observed in the X-radiograph, where the distinct black borders indicate passages where the paint was thinner, which allowed the X-rays to pass through (see fig. 6). A similar method of laying down the initial composition was consistently used by his father Camille. For example, it can be seen in his pointillist work, The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Éragny, painted just a year prior. However, Lucien’s brushstrokes are not as large and sweeping as those of his father. As with his father’s painting, an underdrawing for the initial composition could not be discerned by infrared photography (fig. 13).¹⁷

However, once Lucien finished the initial painting, he did make an underpainting to lay out all the changes that are now visible. The MA-XRF scan for mercury (fig. 14), which is indicative of vermilion, clearly shows the extensive red underpainting (see fig. 9). The scan not only shows the extent of the underpainting, but the technique used. The brushstrokes are linear and painted in a fluid medium, the lines tapering off at the ends. This color is unusual, as the Pissarros' planning stage was typically undertaken in a fluid French ultramarine (fig. 15), which can be seen in other Pissarro works in the IMA collection such as Woman Washing Her Feet in a Brook by Camille and Rye from Cadborough, Sunset by Lucien. Red was probably chosen to make the new guidelines more easily discernible over the veil of predominantly cool-colored dots. The vermilion paint also contains some bone black, as confirmed with Raman spectroscopy.

Lucien applied the paint in two or three stages, allowing each layer to dry in between. The larger areas such as the back wall, sky, and floor were started with hatched strokes. This can be observed in both raking light and in the X-radiograph (see fig. 6). Lucien used a similar technique to block in the sky in Rye from Cadborough. The rest of this initial layer was painted using fairly linear brushstrokes that conform to the shapes of the elements and were painted wet-in-wet (fig. 16). These brushstrokes were used for Georges’s body, chair, window mullions, jardiniere, easel, and the table on the right-hand side (seen in raking light) (fig. 17). These brushstrokes were also used for the original table (seen in raking light extending from the corner of the current table to the boy’s foot).

After this initial layer was dry, Lucien then superimposed short strokes or round dabs of paint on top, for the most part allowing each color to dry before applying another (fig. 18). Lucien started the underlayers with thin paint, and with every layer he used a thicker application.

To create a network of discernible dots, Lucien spaced them out and did not allow them to overlap (fig. 19).

The green paint may have been one of the first colors applied, as the brushstrokes are very evenly spaced and well organized. The MA-XRF scan for copper makes clear that the paint strokes on the upper-left corner are painted in rows. Subsequent colors are more densely packed and applied in a random manner, seemingly filling in the spaces. This can be seen, for example, in the MA-XRF scan for cobalt (fig. 20).

As he continued to paint, Lucien filled in the spaces he had left between the larger blocked out areas. In the photomicrograph below, one can see how the bare canvas between the head and the background was filled in with yellow paint (fig. 21).

As described in the [Summary of Treatment History](/technical-reports/1995.100#summary-of-treatment-history) section, underneath this painting exists another composition almost identical to Corner of the Studio (Coin d’atelier). The table was once longer obscuring Georges's legs. On the table were entirely different objects. These changes can clearly be observed in the X-radiograph (see [fig. 6](/technical-reports/1995.100#summary-of-treatment-history)). The wrought iron gate outside the window was added after the initial composition was laid out, as in X-radiograph we can see there are no spaces around the blue arabesques. More minor changes to the composition such as a shortening of George's knees and an extension of an arm of the chair can be seen in raking light ([fig. 16](/technical-reports/1995.100#application-and-technique)). Remnants of the blue knees can be seen under magnification, overpainted with its complementary color, orange (fig. 22).

Lucien not only made changes from what we see in the smaller sketch but also made subtle pentimenti as he worked on this new composition. The MA-XRF scan for mercury shows the corner of the tablecloth and Georges's proper left foot have been repositioned (fig. 23).

At least three sizes of brushes were used to build up the dense network of dots. As he built up each layer, Lucien used smaller and rounder brushstrokes (fig. 24).

Overlapping MA-XRF maps for copper and arsenic indicate the warm green used for the chair and the decoration on the jardiniere was painted using emerald green (fig. 25). The same green pigment was also dabbed into the decoration on the tablecloth as well as darker, shadowy areas like the boy’s clothing, hair, and the back wall.

The cooler green used for the leafy plant in the jardiniere is a mixture of emerald green and cobalt blue. The MA-XRF map for cobalt indicates that in much of the blue shadows, cobalt blue was used (fig. 26). A second blue in the shadowy areas, such as the blue used for the hat, is French ultramarine. This was confirmed with Raman spectroscopy on dark blue particles in the uppermost layer of Sample a (see fig. 7).

In the same orange layer of Sample a, SEM-EDS found mercury in the red pigment particles, which is indicative of vermilion (figs. 27–30). This same mixture was used in orange dabs of paint in the reworking of La Grande Jatte.¹⁹ The mixture was found in Camille’s The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Éragny as well. It was likely used by all three artists to depict Fénéon’s notion of “solar orange,” a term used to describe the particular hue of afternoon light.²⁰

Two reds are used in this painting. Vermilion was used for the vibrant warm red of the tablecloth and in mixtures for orange and pink as indicated in the MA-XRF scan for mercury (see fig. 12 above). A red lake was used to add depth and darkness to shadowy blue areas. The cool-toned transparent red paint can be seen under high magnification in the sitter's hair (fig. 31).[^21]

The paint is in fairly good condition. It exhibits age cracks throughout, as is expected. Under magnification it can be observed that much of the paint displays bubbles (fig. 32). This is a phenomenon that was noted in other works by Lucien in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art and is thought to be the result of the incorporation of water into the paint mixture.[^22]

Remnants of dirt can be seen in the interstices of the paint under magnification (fig. 33).

There are small losses throughout the painting on the lower-left and upper-right corners. Many losses are concentrated on the borders of the initial composition. They likely occurred in passages where the paint did not properly adhere. The areas of loss can be seen in the infrared luminescence image as well as under ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence (figs 34, 35).

As mentioned in the “Summary of Treatment History” section, after the cleaning of this painting in 1996, Chief Conservator David Miller applied a both a brush and spray varnish coating of Acryloid B-72 and mattified the coating with the use of an eraser. The fluorescence of the synthetic varnish can be observed in the ultraviolet-induced fluorescence image below (fig. 35). The work looks appropriately matte, which would have been Lucien’s preference.²¹ Posthumously, Lucien's wife attached a label indicating to future stewards of his paintings not to apply varnish.²²

The frame is a passe-partout flat profile with a raised squared border at the outer edge and a cavetto at the sight edge. Made from poplar wood, it has 45-degree miter joinery in the corners (fig. 38).

In notes for a presentation at the time of the work’s first display in the IMA’s Neo-Impressionist galleries, Miller wrote, “Although no direct evidence has been found to date as to what the frame on ‘Interior of the Studio’ looked like when it first exhibited in 1887, the collaborative decision was made to put it in a white frame with the profile based upon a photograph of Camille working in the same Éragny studio (as seen in our painting) showing a stack of frames on the floor, including a single white one (fig. 39). The frame was designed by this Conservator, fabricated by the museum carpenter out of poplar, and was given six coats of gilder’s gesso by the conservation technician. Test panels were painted with Liquitex colors and were viewed against the painting in the neo-impressionist gallery, under the correct lighting. The color selection of a slightly warm yellowish tone was made by the Chief Curator and the Conservator. The frame was then painted with the correct tone and was ‘antiqued’ with rottenstone in 2% matte soluvar in mineral spirits.” ²⁴