We recognize the music that goes with the words “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done” hanging in the space between the telescope and the lines of retorts and water glasses stacked on the top shelf in the attic.

Then focus on, the traces of outlines left in the spaces between the black background velvet and unprimed brown linen canvas that support the scene.

We can guess that the picture started life as a nature morte. That it was then filled in with flat black shadows to make the darkness of the background, then detailed with muted early mid-tones and finally finished with vivid things, chosen a representation of light.

Nature morte shaped, but of a landscape shaped image, constructed with things made with light, that is fragmented by a pulse of stark tonal contrasts, it describes a whole image seen in perspective.

A scene painted black, that is just dark enough to leave everything that is visible, appear to be, less subject of gravity than hanging in space.