Two lines above the musician’s wrist indicate the concise motion of his hand as it travels up and down the cello’s strings. In this portrait (perhaps of Horace Britt), Giovanni Boldini focused on the essential: the musician’s concentrated facial expression and the hand manipulating the strings. After training in Italy, Boldini settled in Paris in the late 1800s, where he became a leading portrait painter to high society. Known as the Master of Swish, Boldini used a fluid painting style suited to the whoosh of a taffeta gown, but this drawing displays a tighter technique.