Kurtesky points out that the figure in the present work is dressed in a completely different costume to that worn by Ochtervelt's earlier Portrait of an Ensign of 1660, in the Dienst Verspreide Rijkscollection, The Hague (S.D. Kuretsky, op. cit., p. 63, no. 25, fig. 60, and p. 57, no. 13, fig. 148). The costume is, however, similar to those of the soldiers depicted in a pair of genre scenes recorded in the Assheton Bennett Collection, datable circa 1660-63 (ibid., pp. 64-5, nos. 14-5, figs. 25-6). Thus, Kuretsky believes the present work should be interpreted as a genre picture, for which the artist himself may have modelled, as the same likeness recurs in his Self Portrait, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The same likeness is used again by the artist in several studies of other single genre types, all painted on small panels, using a similar format, and datable to the mid 1660s; see, for example, The Peasant Smoking, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, The Singing Violinist, Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, and The Embracing Cavalier and The Sleeping Soldier, Assheton Bennett Collection, Manchester City Art Galleries. The present picture may be viewed, therefore, as one in a series of essays in which the artist portrayed himself in the guise of various professions.