The automaton fashioned as a monkey painter sitting on a pedestal with its legs crossed, is positioned on the top panel of an oval black wooden base raised on four turned supports, set beneath an arch decorated with the branches featuring flowers and leaves. When the mechanisms are wound and switched on, melody plays: the monkey replicates working on a portrait by loading its brush with paint and brushing horizontally at varying levels with the paintbrush in its right hand; its head turns from side to side and moves up and down, its eyelids above the glass eyes lower and rise, and its lower jaw opens and closes to reveal teeth.

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