That is, a drawing lesson. Presumably CFA’s teacher was Pietro Cardelli (d. 1822), who had executed a bust of JQA in 1818 and did decorative carving on the Capitol. See JQA, Diary, 1818–1819, and his correspondence with Cardelli in Adams Papers; Groce and Wallace, Dict. Amer. Artists . There is some question, however, whether there was not a second artist named Cardelli at work in Washington at this time.