The drawing is an exact copy of a composition by Willem van de Velde the Younger, which exists in at least two painted versions. One, in the collection of Bennett Robinson, New York, is signed and dated 1663 and was painted mainly by van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707) for the studio, and the other, presumably an 18th-century studio copy, was formerly in the collection of New-York Historical Society, New York (sale, New York, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 9 October 1980, lot 36, repr.).
Signed and dated at lower right in pen and gray ink, "Hk Kob: f: 1778".
Watermark: "J Honig & Zoonen", fragment (Heawood, no. 3345).
Velde, Willem van de, 1633-1707, Copy after.
Spencer, Albert Edward John Spencer, Earl, 1892-1975
Spencer, John, 1708-1746, former owner.
Drummond, William, former owner.
Vietor, Alexander O., donor.
Vietor, Alexander O., Mrs., donor.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Twenty-First Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984-1986. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1989, p. 354.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 391.