Description: Black chalk, 259 x 419 mm. Ruled framing lines in black chalk, missing on the left side. Central vertical fold with repairs at the bottom and a few centimetres further up (behind the foot of the central figure), and a bluish patch around it. Traces of another vertical fold 25 mm from the right margin. Scattered brown stains. Watermark: Flag. Chain lines: 26 mm. Inscribed in the drawing in black chalk, above the woman, the greet, and in the lower left corner this not big enouf.

Ascribed to Van de Venne in the Anckarsvärd inventory. The composition and the characters are similar to his grisaille paintings, e.g. Arme Weelde in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen or the smaller Allom-arm in the Mauritshuis, both dated 1635.  The hurdy-gurdy player (?) in the left foreground, in his low cap, unkempt beard and bundle of rags, is particularly like the figure on the left in the Mauritshuis grisaille, and serves as a darker repoussoir, as similar figures invariably do in grisailles.

While the outlines have been strengthened all over with short strokes, large areas have a rather uniform shade of light grey. The hatching does in part follow the forms, as it does in the sketchy small grisaille in the Mauritshuis, but the short vertical strokes typical of the artist are lacking. Areas with hatching stand next to areas left white, but it does not bring out the forms as in other works. It seems possible that, rather than being a drawing by Van de Venne, this is a copy of an oil sketch. There is also the inscription at the bottom saying “this not big enough”, perhaps indicating that the repoussoir has come out too small. There is no other known inscription by the artist in English, and this too points to a foreign hand. 

The drawing is similar in style to a series of red chalk drawings of groups of peasants and beggars in various collections, in particular one in the Rijksprentenkabinet Leiden. However, that drawing has the characteristic hatching with vertical strokes, and the sky is rendered with horizontal strokes in a much more systematic way than in our drawing.  Royalton-Kisch has suggested that the red chalk drawings are copies by the engraver Daniel van den Bremden, while Edwin Buijsen considers them to have been made by Van de Venne himself as a sort of studio archive. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 448]

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