When I first visit to the Museed’Orsay in Paris as a student, I was overwhelmed by Gustave Courbet’s painting The Studio, A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life.

When I finally set out to paint a studio interior with self portrait myself, I had waited several years for my memories of the painting to be sufficiently vague: I wanted my painting to be inspired by the feeling I got from the Courbet, rather then the particulars of the composition.