John Vanderbank's sixty-eight illustrations for Lord Carteret's edition of Don Quixote represent his main occupation during the last decade of his life. Commissioned in or around 1726, Vanderbank completed his designs, a finished set of which is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, by December 1729 and they were engraved by Gerard Van der Gucht (1696-1776) for publication in 1738. The present drawing is a more considered version of a sketch in the British Museum, dated 1729 and one of a set of preparatory sketches for the series. Although drawn in reverse to the sketch the drawing was eventually not engraved. After 1729 Vanderbank made two sets of oil panels of his illustrations; according to Vertue this was to satisfy his creditors: 'To the last days of his life he had the good fortune to have a friend for his landlord - who never took any money from him for rent ... let him paint any thing what he woud [sic] for it - (Storys of Don Quixot) for which he not only had house rent, but the furniture ...' (Notebooks III/98).