This leaf comes from a sketchbook given to the Royal Academy as the work of Thomas Gainsborough. However, shortly after the acquisition, the attribution to Gainsborough was deemed to be incorrect. Although the artist has not been definitely confirmed, the sketchbook has recently been attributed to Edward Francis Burney.

Inscriptions under some of the drawings in the sketchbook appear to correctly identify the sitters, almost all of whom were young artists enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in the mid to late 1770s. Almost all of the portrait sketches are drawn in a pen and ink outline over pencil with shading in grey wash and some of the sketches show the young men drawing or painting. It is very likely that the artist was himself a student at the Schools at this time. Edward Francis Burney, cousin of the writer and diarist Fanny Burney, joined the RA Schools in 1777. Although the drawings differ considerably from his later work - which mostly consisted of illustration and caricature - the pencil drawings, in particular, are very similar in style to those in a scrapbook of drawings depicting paintings in the RA annual exhibitions (1780-1784, Huntington Library, Los Angeles: https://emuseum.huntington.org/objects/18597/sketches- by-ef-burney-from-pictures-exhibited-in-the- royal?ctx=8c4306582fe45e99d6d49f0b910e088125a728bb&idx=66). Furthermore, the use of pen and ink with grey wash to create strong shadows in the RA sketchbook is close to the style Burney employed around 1780 (see, for example, Burney's two watercolours of the RA plaster academy in the RA Collection RA 03/7484 and 03/7485).

Burney took a particular interest in both his fellow students and his surroundings at Somerset House, producing two watercolours of students at work in the RA 'Plaster Academy' as well as a series of watercolours of the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy from 1780-1784 (now in the British Museum https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1904- 0101-1 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1904- 0101-2 and https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1904- 0101-3) and individual sketches after paintings shown in the exhibitions, especially works by de Loutherbourg. However, as yet, there is no documentary evidence to support the attribution to Burney.

In addition to the series of portrait sketches, there is also a set of rapidly-drawn but accomplished pencil sketches of a theatrical subject, perhaps King Lear, and also of musical entertainment. These are possibly by another artist in the same family. Other drawings in the sketchbook appear to be after, or based on, contemporary portraits, similar to Burney's scrapbook in the Huntington Library. Although some of these resemble certain portraits by Gainsborough (probably leading to the original attribution), none have yet been clearly identified. There are also some less accomplished pencil drawings, perhaps by another hand, probably a younger artist.

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