 Adler sees the old man as holding a stick (a symbolic paintbrush) to the grindstone as expressing the artist's "'labor' to give birth to something eternal," as signified by the fossil-like Beethoven mask by his hand, the reference to a hunt for fossils referring to this desire to leave behind remains—art—that will survive death, as a woman's children outlive her.Dickinson himself admitted that the desire to make something as lasting as the work of the old masters was manifested in the size of the work (at 96½ inches high it was the largest painting he had done).