Troost made several pastels and oil paintings illustrating scenes from Abraham Alewyn's play,
Beslikte Swaantje, and this oil on paper study is for the figure of the Squire in another depiction of the same scene that we see in the previous lot. The painting, dated 1741, is now in the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam.
1 A number of other figures from the same composition are recorded in a set of black and red chalk studies, now in the collections of the Koninglijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
2, but the present oil study, surely preparatory for the painting, seems to be almost unique in Troost's work.
1. Niemeijer, op. cit., no. 289 S
2. Ibid., nos. 305 T-309 T