A monk with a pipe offered a glass of beer by a woman

Dusart did a number of drawings with clerics drinking, smoking and acting in other ways unsuitable for their position. With these he followed a tradition started by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. At the end of the 17th Century, these subjects were drawn to ridicule the French Catholic clergy under King Louis XIV, and were so popular among 17th Century Dutch protestants that some of them were engraved and published in both Les Héros de la Ligue ou La Procession Monacale, conduitte par Louis XIV, pour la Conversion des Protestants de son Royaume, Paris, 1691, and Renversement de la Morale Chrétienne published in the same time. A series of mezzotints with monks and nuns lampooning the Catholic church is close in spirit to that (Hollstein VI, 57-62).
A series of twelve watercolours of clerics is in the Prentenkabinet, Leiden (J.G. van Gelder, Honderd teekeningen van oude meesters, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam, 1920, p. 24, nos. 42-53, illustrated), and a series of seven was sold in these Rooms, 9 November 1998, lot 141.