Nash was primarily a landscape painter until the late 1920s when he began to adopt certain characteristics of Surrealism into his works. This change in his art was undoubtedly provoked by an exhibition of Giorgio de Chirico's paintings, which he saw in London in 1928. Nash admired the enigmatic nature of de Chirico’s work, a quality he adopted for this painting. The work is a geometrical composition in which the lines of the easel are set off against the angle of the painting in the background and the corner of the room. The antique gold frame seen in this painting was later used by Nash to frame another painting.