Pehr Hilleström was one of the most highly regarded and versatile Swedish painters of the eighteenth century. He took up studying painting under landscape painter Johan Philip Korn (1727–1796) and later trained with French-born painter Guillaume Taraval (1701–1750) and architect Jean Eric Rehn (1717–1793) at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. During a trip to France between 1757 and 1758, Hilleström encountered the work of Boucher and Chardin, and he furthered his education in weaving, opening a tapestry workshop in Stockholm in 1759. Hilleström became particularly famous for his night scenes of burning cottages and townscapes, and he was a pioneer in depicting realistic working scenes, often set within mines and forges, as in the present work.

This small canvas depicts a furnace-lit interior of a smithy seen through an open wooden door. On the left, a young blacksmith with his back to the viewer is at work, captured while holding a glowing piece of metal at a forge with a pair of tongs. With his raised left arm he activates a blower to increase the temperature of metal through a blast of air. To the man’s right, another blacksmith wearing a red cap is depicted in profile while at rest. A third worker with a hat appears nearby, sitting on a wooden stool and holding an empty tankard as he looks upwards to the right outside the canvas. Forging equipment is scattered across the foreground. An anvil stands on a wood base at the centre of the composition and several tongs hang from the forge. Metal sparks, the only source of light in the painting, fly upwards, illuminating the scene and creating an effect of intense chiaroscuro. The artist’s signature appears on the lower right of the painting.