Have you ever been in an art museum and seen someone set up with an easel and paints in front of a painting, making their own copy? I saw this guy in the European Paintings galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and admired the skill at which he was copying this painting. Unfortunately, I don’t know which artist or painting this was, since I didn’t want to step between him and the painting to see. I certainly could have stepped in to check the wall tag, but I was content to observe from behind him.
How does one do this? Can anyone just walk into an art museum and set up an easel and start to paint? Absolutely not … but I had to do a little research to find out what the Met’s policy is. They have something called “The Copyist Program,” which mentions that they have allowed artists to paint their own versions of original artworks in The Met collection since 1872. But this is only offered in two windows of time, an eight-week session either in the spring or in the fall, and an artist must fill out an application to be considered this allowance.
My curiosity got the best of me, so I dropped a copy of my photo into Google Images to see if I could identify the art work, and sure enough I got a match: it’s “The Temptation of Saint Mary Magdalen,” circa 1626, by the German artist Johann Liss. You can learn more about this art work on The Met’s site here.
Here’s one more look at the artist at work in the Met’s galleries. I like how the kid (blurred out for privacy purposes) ended up right in the middle of the negative space between the actual Johann Liss painting and the artist and his easel.
