Stuven's work frequently incorporates motifs borrowed from pictures by Willem van Aelst. In the present painting the composition in general and several of the flowers in particular - notably the poppy and poppy seed at upper right and the pair of carnations at lower left - recall van Aelst's picture of 1663 in the Mauritshuis (see, for instance, I. Bergstrom, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1956, p.222, fig.186), while the iris at top left and the dragonfly are similar, and in similar positions to, those in van Aelst's related composition of similar date in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (J. G. van Gelder, Ashmolean Museum, Catalogue of the Collection of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Pictures bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, Oxford, 1950, pp.30-1, no.3, illustrated)