This week’s work of art is by a Scottish artist, John Quinton Pringle, who around 1904 painted Study of a Head, which is also known as Man With a Drinking Mug.

Here’s how the National Gallery of Scotland, where the painting is hung, describes Pringle and the work:

Pringle trained as an optician in 1874 and ran his own business as optician and electrician from 1896 to 1923. He used his shop as a studio after hours painting predominantly small canvases, like this painting. From around 1895 he developed an interest in French Impressionism, which influenced this work. This is one of three portraits Pringle made of an elderly man who frequented the Saltmarket area of Glasgow and visited the artist in his shop. The sitter was nicknamed ‘Kruger’ due to his supposed likeness to Paul Kruger, the Boer resistance leader and president of the Transvaal republic in South Africa. The painting is thought to date from 1904 – it is signed and dated but Pringle’s style makes it difficult to read.

You can read Pringle’s biography at Wikipedia and see a few more of his paintings at the WikiGallery and there are links to even more of his paintings at ArtCyclopedia.