A first sketch for this is in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. Though not accepted by Schnackenburg (op.cit., no. 559, attributed to Isack van Ostade), Slatkes (op.cit., pp. 234-5, fig. 8) argues convincingly that this study could be autograph, even though it is in the same sense as the final print. The verso of the drawing shows a preliminary sketch for The Anglers, B.26 (see lot 24 in this sale). The preliminary study for the present plate, in the same sense and incised, is in the Fondation Custodia, Institut Néerlandais, Paris (Schnackenburg, op.cit., nos. 559, verso and 53). Slatkes (loc.cit.) also mentions a drawing formerly in the De Boer Collection, Hergiswil, perhaps a copy after a circular drawing that Ostade may have done of the same scene. A picture with the same village setting in the same sense as the plate, but with different figures also dancing, was sold at Lempertz, Cologne, 27 May 1991, lot 95, plate XXI, and is possibly identical with Hofstede de Groot 797. Schnackenburg dates this plate to circa 1647-52, while Slatkes dates it slightly later, to circa 1653, comparing it to B.34 dated 1653 and to B.45 which may also be dated to that year (see lots 32 and 42 in this sale). He also compares the subject to the prints by Sebald Beham and Pieter van der Borcht, as mentioned in the note to lot 42 of this sale. Ackley (C.S. Ackley, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 1981, pp. 168 and 215-6) remarks that 'In the Dance under the Trellis, Ostade seems to have been more interested in conveying a sense of the continuous flow and deep recession of space and of the immersion of figures, buildings, and vegetation in light and atmosphere than in the antics of individual participants'. He notes that Constantijn Daniel van Renesse's etching of a similar scene (Hollstein 7), which is dated to circa 1650, is very comparable in the arrangement of space.