Like his master Adriaen van Ostade, Dusart made a small number of finished watercolours, mainly at the end of his life. These small, intimate pictures, often on vellum, were obviously intended as finished works of art to meet the increasing demand from collectors during the second half of the 17th Century. After Ostade's death in 1685, Dusart became the owner of his master's drawings and those of Adriaen's brother Isack, who had died at a young age in 1649. Dusart is known to have reworked and sold many of these drawings, and continued the traditional subject of the Ostade: peasants in their daily life. The present lot, like his watercolour on vellum of a seated man smoking a pipe, dated 1691, sold at Christie's, Amsterdam, 14 November 1994, lot 87, is clearly his own invention. The figures may be compared with those in his mezzotint of Youth in the series after the Four Ages of Man Holl. VI, 44. The dog on the right symbolizes Faith and is seated at the woman's left where she carries her keys.