The story behind

The composition centers on a very fine piece from the collection of Émile Hermès. This nineteenth-century box of colors doubtlessly belonged to an amateur outdoor painter of the Romantic era – a hiker wandering high and low in search of a subject. The clever, tasteful design incorporates everything a painter needs to commune with Nature. Watercolor tablets, phials of pigment, sealing wax, brushes, charcoal, goose quills, a knife and pocketknife, a scraper, a ruler, a mother-of-pearl and gilded silver paper-cutter, a white marble palette, a cut-glass pestle, miniature dishes and – of course – tubes of paint, a then-recent invention dating to 1841. There is a place for everything in the paint-box's compartments, drawers and gusset. Crafted in lemonwood, its beauty lies equally in its delightful appearance and intelligent design.