Tom Phillips writes in his brochure dealing with this series of works that he painted small pictures when he had little time while working on the translating and illustrating of Dante's Inferno. It occurred to him that he could recapture the original impression of a larger space "not by making the works bigger but by making the context in which they were to be viewed smaller." He described the small paintings set into miniature gallery walls as "National Gallery of Lilliput." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.