As William Robinson points out (loc. cit., p.13), the present picture is the only example of a painting by the artist for which a more or less complete series of drawings survives. Only the animal studies are lacking. A preliminary sketch (ibid., p.19, no.B-11, pl.8) differs in many respects from the painting, particularly in the number and positions of the animals and in the addition of antique ruins which do not appear in the drawing. The modello is not known in the original, but its appearance in the form of an aquatint facsimile by the Dutch amateur and printmaker C. Ploos van Amstel (ibid., p.12, fig.7), corresponds almost exactly with the finished picture.

Red chalk studies for the seated man in the Historisch Museum, Amsterdam (ibid., p.21, no.D-6, pl.7) and the peasant girl in the Frits Lugt Collection at the Institut Néederlandais, Paris (ibid., p.21, no.D-7, pl.9), seem to have originated at different times. Van de Velde adapted the peasant girl from the Institut Néederlandais sheet, but the absence of a second woman which appears in the chalk study and a change in the position of the girl's head in the preliminary sketch, indicate that he executed this figure study before the sketch (ibid., pl.8). The chalk study of the boy, on the other hand, seems to have been drawn after the preliminary sketch but before the modello, as the study shows alterations in the position of the man's legs made after the preliminary sketch, but corresponds exactly with the modello, and in turn, the finished picture