Three Figures with a Dog

probably 1800s

Three Figures with a Dog, probably 1800s. Jean-Michel the Younger Moreau (French, 1741–1814). Pen and black ink with brown and gray washes and traces of white gouache (brim of standing man’s hat); overall: 14 x 9.9 cm (5 1/2 x 3 7/8 in.); sheet: 7.9 x 4.9 cm (3 1/8 x 1 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Muriel Butkin 2017.216 An accomplished draftsman in eighteenth-century France, Moreau the Younger produced numerous designs for book illustrations of which this may be an example. In this scene a woman directs the hand of a man as he writes. Raising her left hand, she gestures to the solider to remain at a distance while the small dog reacts to this peculiar encounter.