Arie de Vois was one of the most accomplished Leiden fijnschilders and a close follower of Gerard Dou and Frans van Mieris I. Judging by the sitter's resemblance to de Vois's painted self-portraits in the Louvre (Inv. no. 1933), the Mauritshuis, The Hague (Inv. no. 204), an English private collection, and in a self-portrait drawing in the Albertina, Vienna (see H. van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1936, p. 357), this is the artist's own image. According to the seventeenth century chronicler of artists' lives, Arnold Houbraken, de Vois married well and lived a high life. The timepiece he holds was a traditional vanitas attribute in portraiture, and thus may allude to life's transience.