The Painter Johann Adam Klein at the easel in his studio in the Palais Chotek in Vienna

In 1816, the two young artist friends Erhard and Klein left their hometown Nuremberg and moved to Vienna, where they rented modest studios in the Palais Chotek of the Josephstadt. The artist is sitting in his bare room, which is completely unfurnished except for the easel and two chairs; he wears a coat and hat while working on a rather small oil painting. The light enters the room from the side; the lower part of the window is covered, its upper casements are open. The portfolio and the plaster cast of the head of a horse from the Parthenon indicate his profession. Depictions of horses are very common in Klein’s work. The friends both drew one another and in an almost identical form: Klein’s drawing of Erhard (Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett) shows him working on a watercolour, and is very similar in terms of setting and composition, although somewhat more detailed. In 1817, Klein also drew the view of the garden and of the city’s houses and churches from his studio window (Vienna, Historisches Museum).