Probably related to the drawing of La Recompense refusée in the British Museum. Two shepherds refuse the reward they are offered for having killed a wolf. The studies for this composition are particularly free and similar in technique to the present sheet. A study of A Standing Shepherd and a Boy in the Musée Nivenel, Compiégne and another in the Städelsche Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt display a spontaneity which suggests that the artist witnessed a scene very similar to the one depicted and thus may have made the present study from nature.

Edward Munhall dates this group of drawings circa 1785-90