The preliminary study for this, in the same sense, is in the Fondation Custodia, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, while a study of a seated peasant, also in the same sense, is in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Schnackenburg, op.cit., nos. 68-9, recto). This is drawn on the verso of the preliminary study for B.34, dated 1653 (see lot 32). A drawing of the fiddler, in the same sense, is in an Amsterdam private collection. It is not accepted by Schnackenburg because the fiddler is holding his violin in his left hand (op.cit., no. F22). Peter Schatborn has no reservations about the attribution (Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, Amsterdam Washington, 1981-2, p. 80-1, fig. 3), noting that the artist could have positioned his model like this knowing that the figure would be shown in reverse in the print. Schnackenburg dates this plate to circa 1653-after 1660. Slatkes, connecting it to the two preliminary studies in Hamburg (see above), which may be dated to 1653, and noting that impressions from this plate are known on paper dated 1654 and 1656 by Churchill, defines the dating to circa 1654-6 (Pelletier a.o., op.cit., pp. 254-5). He also points out that Sebald Beham's woodcut of a large village fair (Pauli/Hollstein 1245), dated 1539, may have served as a model for the present subject. However, it would seem that for the present lot and the plates of B.47 and B.48 (see lots 44-5 in this sale), Ostade could also have been influenced by prints of similar scenes after Pieter Breughel the Elder (1525-1569), such as those of the fair at Hoboken and of the fair of Saint George (Lebeer 30 and 52, Hollstein 207-8).