The preliminary study for this, in the same sense and incised, is in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Schnackenburg, op.cit., no. 78). This study includes a dog which does not appear in the etching, nor in the related finished watercolour of the same subject, signed and dated '167(2?)', now in the British Museum, London (Schnackenburg, op.cit., no. 215). The collector Sybrand Feitama (1694-1758), who owned the watercolour, noted in his inventory that it was dated 1672. Ostade's comparable picture of tric-track players in an interior with a man seated looking out of an opened window is in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Buckingham Palace, London. Schnackenburg dates this plate to circa 1653-60 and Slatkes to circa 1653.
The geometrical fragment on the reverse of the plate shows the right half of a plate originally used to print the illustration of a half circle in Juan Alfonso de Molina Cano's Descubrimientos Geométricos, Antwerp, 1598. Ostade used the other half of this plate for his etching B.36 (see lot 33 in this sale), which Slatkes dates to circa 1654-60. Ostade's etchings B.12 and B.25 are also done a plate used for de Molina Cano's book (see lots 10 and 23 in this sale). For further information see p. .. in this catalogue.