A half-length composition drawing of standing figures, with a bearded man giving three boys a singing lesson. The man is in the centre, with his head half turned to the left, holding a score in his left hand and conducting with his right hand. On the left are two boys, one in profile to the right. On the right a third boy looks down at the score but does not seem to be singing like the others. Visible through the paper in the top right corner is an inscription on the verso in ink: 80.

This drawing appears to be a copy of an original by Guercino which is now lost. Etched in reverse by R. Dalton (Boydell, I, 57).

The Italian engraver and draughtsman Francesco Bartolozzi met the Royal Librarian Richard Dalton in Italy in 1763, who was in Italy to find works to buy for George III's collection. Dalton persuaded him to come to England in 1764, where he was appointed Engraver to The King and became a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768. Over the next forty years Bartolozzi was widely admired for the prints he made after drawings by Guercino, Holbein and Michelangelo in the Royal Collection, his engravings after his contemporaries Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Benjamin West and Angelika Kauffmann, and the prints he made for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. He was also known as the leading exponent of the stipple manner technique, often using brown, red and ochre coloured inks.