Altetus Tolling (1627-1691), the son of a burgomaster of Steenwijk, is recorded as a lawyer in The Hague in 1655, when he married Aleid Jansson, the daughter of a burgomaster of Kampen. Their children depicted here are (left to right): Petrus (1664-1680), Geertruid Machteld (1655-1681), Catharina (1659-1744), Aegidius (1658-1741), who married Margaret van Ditsum in 1691, Aleida Johanna, and Paulus (1663-1670). When the present picture was relined in 1908 an inscription was found on the back of the original canvas 'Catherina Aet VIII, Aegidius Aet IX'. By the time the present picture was executed the family had moved to Amsterdam and it may well have been intended to express the family's new social status in their adopted home, the pastoral idiom being perfectly suited to the incorporation of indications of the sitters' prosperity as they relax in carefree fashion on what appear to be their own lands.
As Professor Sumowski points out, Moes records a portrait of Tolling himself executed by van den Eeckhout in the same year. In 1682 Tolling and his wife commissioned from Steven van Duynen a pendant to the present picture showing them at the ages of 55 and 47 with several children including Eva, aged 11, and Laurens, aged 10; the painting is now in a private collection in Hoogeveen. A later generation of Tollings was portrayed by Cornelis Troost in 1742 in a picture now in the Hannema de Stuers Collection at Heino (J. W. Niemeijer, Cornelis Troost, 1973, p.204, no.135, illustrated).
A similar group portrait by van den Eeckhout of four unknown children in pastoral dress, also painted in 1667, is now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (McNeil Kettering, op. cit., fig.87; Sumowski, op. cit., no.540, illustrated p.903)