Flowers in a terracotta urn on a marble ledge, a snail to the left

Similar bravura handling of pen and ink developed in watercolor can be found in a signed drawing by van Huysum of Fruit in front of leaves in an urn in the Louvre and another of Fruit in and around an urn in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam (C. White, The Flower Drawings of Jan van Huysum, Leigh-on-Sea, 1964, nos. 106 and 118). It has been suggested that fully worked drawings of this type were made by van Huysum to demonstrate the possibilities of a composition to a prospective patron.