The painting probably dates from about 1670, the year when Steen returned from Haarlem to Leiden. It is unusual among his works for the theatrical character of the setting & the action depicted. The main focus of the composition is the seated lady, dressed in brown & orange, who is represented singing, with an open music book in her lap. The men to each side, one holding a glass of wine & one playing a lute, wear old-fashioned costumes with ruffled collars which probably derive from the dress of figures in the popular theatre of the time, the Commedia dell' Arte. ...

This is one of four pictures probably painted as a series & probably executed about 1757. The pictures are documented by etchings of three of them (in reverse) by Domenico & Lorenzo Tiepolo as the work of their father. The only picture with an identif ...

A man deals cards at the table. Two men, a boy, & a woman looking down from a window, watch the game. At the left a man urinates, while in the right background a woman cooks over the fire, surrounded by four men. The panel has on the reverse the monogram ...

The men are playing tric-trac (a form of backgammon), & a woman is scoring on the side of the board with a piece of chalk. It is not clear whether this is a simple scene from everyday life, or a representation of gambling as a symbol of idleness & mortality. There is a similar painting by Duyster of tric-trac players in Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum). ...

An inn-keeper's slate, playing cards & a pipe are among the objects on the table. The setting is probably a tavern. The sleeping woman, the innkeeper's wife or a serving maid, has been drinking & smoking. Female drunkenness was a subject of both amusement & moral admonition in 17th-century Dutch genre paintings. ...

In the left foreground is a 'kaag' (a Dutch vessel with a straight raking stem & clinker-built). The man-of-war, the big vessel behind, has the arms of the Province of Holland on her stern & flies a Dutch ensign. ...

The man on the left is writing out a list of taxes on items such as wine, beer & fish, which have been farmed out to private individuals to collect, as was common in this period. It is one of the numerous versions of this composition, probably painted as a satire on covetousness, which evidently found a ready market in second quarter of the 16th century. ...

Vedettes are mounted sentries who were usually placed near an outpost. Here, they are on watch by a stream with a dog, & occupy a relatively tranquil sunlit landscape that is comparable with the early Italianate landscapes produced in Haarlem by Jan Wijnants (died 1684) & Nicolaes Berchem (1620
- 1683). The two halves of the composition are linked by the vedette on the white horse in the left foreground. The clouds gathering in the sky provide a central focus. The painting is relatively early, probably not much later than the National Gallery's battle scene, ' Cavalry making a Sortie', painted in 1646, which is one of the largest such canvases by Wouwermans & one of his few dated works. From paintings of battles, which were more common in Italy than elsewhere in Europe in the 17th century, Wouwermans seems to have moved towards painting more peaceful scenes with soldiers & horsemen.
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The watermills belonged to the manor house of Singraven near Denekamp, a village in the eastern part of the province of Overijssel, close to the German border. While the watermills do exist, the setting is Ruisdael's invention: there are no hills near Denekamp. Inspired by Ruisdael's repeated depictions of the watermills, his pupil Meindert Hobbema followed his example & painted a series of pictures with the same motif. One of them, ' The Watermills at Singraven near Denekamp', is also in the National Gallery's Collection. ...

The map on the wall above the virginal is based on one of North & South America called ' Americae nova descriptio' which was published by Dancker Danckerts in Amsterdam in 1661. The dress & coiffure of the woman who stands before it are identical to th ...