The Osborne inventory of 1876 refers to the artist as 'T. Brillouin', presumably a misreading of the signature. The style is clearly that of Louis George Brillouin, who specialised in picturesque historical genre scenes of exactly this type.

Interior of a seventeenth-century artist's studio with the artist sitting before his easel, and his palette and brushes on a small table to his right; he looks towards two fashionably dressed gentlemen standing on the right, who have disturbed him; behind the figures is a cupboard with a model of the Borghese Gladiator, and a tondo, possibly depicting an allegory of Charity.