Winslow Homer made his first trip abroad when two of his Civil War paintings were selected for the American section of the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris. While there he stayed in a Montmartre studio and did some painting. The Studio (Metropolitan Museum of Art) depicts a violinist and a cellist playing together in front of a drapery. A virtually identical cellist appears in the BMA’s canvas, but he plays alone. Homer often recycled pictorial elements in his paintings and prints. The double date on the BMA canvas suggests that he completed it in New York, leaving out the violinist and draperies of the Met picture and adding gothic windows to the background. Perhaps they were drawn from the old New York University Building on Washington Square where Homer lived from 1861 to 1872.