The young boy is committing a text to memory and quite literally is a picture of concentration. Although Greuze painted this towards the end of his stay in Italy it shows the strong influence of seventeenth-century Dutch painting and the work of the slightly older French artist Chardin. Greuze asserts the three dimensional character of the boy in a convincing space through such details as his sleeve and book overlapping the table edge. The artist's skilful rendering of textures is also apparent in the painting of the boy's skin, hair, jacket, shirt collar and cuffs.