The Letter of Introduction, David Wilkie
Link is to Google Art Project; high-resolution downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons; original is in the National Galleries of Scotland.
Wilkie gives us a scene supposedly referenced from his own experience, as a young man presents what is evidently an insufficient letter of introduction to a disdainful older man. The inference from the desk and the decorative Japanese jar is that the older gentleman is not only wealthy, but a collector, and the young man an artist.
Oddly, the faces seem to have received almost cursory treatment compared to the level of focus Wilkie has brought to the jar, cabinet, and other objects in the room — particularly the desk and its contents. Even the dog seems more attentively rendered than the young man.
Ostensibly a genre scene, this is to me more of an interior with figures. The desk and it’s array of papers, books, inkwells and qill, along with the deftly rendered jar, are a marvel of still life.