The Library possesses two versions of this composition, both finished watercolors and both signed, one with the artist's initials (1962.2) and one with the name in full and the date 1673 (I, 133). Although each drawing may have been intended to stand as an independent work, they nonetheless served as preparatory studies for the artist's signed and dated painting of the following year, formerly in the collection of A. de Rothschild, Ascott, Wing, near Leighton Buzzard, Buckinghamshire (now the property of the National Trust).
Signed and dated at lower right, in brown ink, "Av.(in ligature) Ostade · 1673".
Watermark: Arms of Amsterdam (similar to Heawood, no. 342: 1674).
Leembruggen, Gérard, 1801-1865, former owner.
Nieuwenhuys, C. J., 1799-1883, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, I, no. 133, repr.
Stampfle, Felice. Rubens and Rembrandt in Their Century : Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from The Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1979, 91, repr.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 191.
100 Master drawings from the Morgan Library & Museum. München : Hirmer, 2008, no. 58, repr. [Jane Shoaf Turner and Felice Stampfle]