Three women talking at night in a Dutch city, one holding a candle

A student of both Cornelis Pronk and Cornelis Troost, Buys was a prolific and versatile artist, active as a painter, book illustrator and printmaker. This work, one of the few pastels known by the artist, was made during the years he spent in the small town of Mijdrecht, and probably illustrates, in the vein of those by Troost, a scene from a play – possibly one of his own, as Buys was also a playwright. The scene is similar to, and may be identical with one depicted by Buys in a work dated 1772, recorded in the sale of the Neyman collection (Amsterdam, 8 July 1776, lot 150). After moving back to Amsterdam in 1760 he became a teacher, then director of the Stadstekenacademie, where the collector Cornelis Ploos van Amstel was one of his pupils.