The theme of itinerant musicians was taken up on numerous occasions by Robert after his return to Paris from Italy: for instance the drawings at Valence, in the Ecole Polytechnique and the painting in the Metropolitan Museum, J. de Cayeux, Les Hubert Robert de la Collection Veyrenc au Musée de Valence, Valence, 1985, no. 82, illustrated, figs. 105-6. All the compositions are very similar: a group of strolling musicians playing to a group of women leaning from the window of a building inspired by Michelangelo's Campidoglio.
The closest in composition to this drawing are a watercolour in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (V. Carlson, Hubert Robert, Drawings and Watercolors, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1978, no. 55, illustrated) and a painting in the Louvre, J. Compin and A. Roquebert, Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures du musée du Louvre et du musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1986, IV, M.I. 1109, illustrated. The three compositions are all in the same direction, and have a similar building on the left and an obelisk in the background, behind the trees. The musicians in the Washington watercolour are further away from the building, and in the present drawing, to fill the space between the wall and the musicians, Robert added a boy collecting the money. A woman feeding the dog has been added in the Paris picture.
The present sheet was, like the other drawings of the subject, probably intended as an independent work of art. Victor Carlson suggested that the present drawing dates from the same period as the Washington watercolour, the late 1770s or early 1780s.