Lot Essay
The preliminary study for this, in the same sense and incised, is in the British Museum, London (Schnackenburg, op.cit., no. 67). Related studies of a man praying and of hands, in the same sense as the plate, are in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Schnackenburg, op.cit., no. 69, verso). Also related are a study of the bust of an old peasant woman in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, in the same sense (Schnackenburg, op.cit., no.116), and a study of a mother and child in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, also in the same sense (unknown to Schnackenburg, L.J. Slatkes, Preparatory Drawings for Prints by Adriaen van Ostade, Drawings Defined, New York, 1987, pp. 237-8, fig. 18). Slatkes has pointed out that Ostade here continues a tradition of depicting families praying before their meal, which was also taken up by Jan Steen and others.