This disquieting interior, executed with a depth of tone and refined technique suggestive of oil painting, is the masterpiece of the little-known Kidder. Born in Boston, the artist specialized in topographical views of his native city, which were typically engraved. His digression into interior perspectives of this kind was evidently prompted by contemporaneous fascination with François-Marius Granet's 1815 painting The Choir of the Capuchin Church in Rome, a replica of which was imported into Boston in 1820. (The original may be the version in the Metropolitan; acc. no. 80.5.2.) Granet's replica elicited a direct copy by Thomas Sully and inspired at least two paintings of Boston interiors with figures. The pictures all share a voyeuristic conceit, of peering into a chamber into which the viewer has not been invited. Kidder's may be the most enigmatic for being deserted and adorned with cobwebs yet offering, in the signs posted in the window, "High Prizes for sale here."