Depicting an eccentric dandy artist seated rakishly on the back of a chair. With expressively modeled plaster-composition head, retrousse nose, blue glass eyes, monocle, articulated "dancing" eyelids and lower lip, extravagantly dressed in plaid breeches, wide-brimmed felt hat, cravat and blue velvet jacket with motifs of palette and brushes painted on the lapels, the chair containing large going-barrel movement driving eight cams and two-air cylinder movement, height 35 in. (89 cm). With wood-handled brass crank and acorn-form stop/start. – The eight cams control a complex series of fifteen movements. Ernest winks and shrugs his shoulders animatedly as he lowers his head, rests his right leg on his left knee and sets to work with pencil and sketch book. He turns his head, sweeps the pencil away, looks up, uncrosses his leg and turns the notebook around to display the portrait of a monkey gentleman in top hat and monocle. Evidently unsatisfied with the result, he sets to work again. When he displays the page a second time, the portrait has come alive and now shows a monkey tipping his hat and chattering. – A large and amusing contemporary automaton based on a design by Gustave Vichy (c. 1890) and produced from original moulds. – Literature: Bailly, "Automata, the Golden Age", pp. 93 and 262 for the original Vichy design.