Dou was born at Leiden. He was a pupil of Rembrandt from 1628 until the latter moved to Amsterdam, probably in 1631. Dou rarely travelled outside Leiden, although he was invited to England by Charles II. He was a genre painter and founder of the school of the so-called fijnschilders (fine painters). His style was greatly admired and his work was much sought after in his own day. A number of pictures, for example, were sent to Sweden for the collection of Queen Christina. His reputation lasted into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the mid seventeenth century a number of artists from the studio of Rembrandt became interested in effects of actual visual deception (so-called ‘trompe l’oeil’), achieved by painting very ordinary things and presumably hanging the paintings where such things might occur in reality. Works by Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-78) - his ‘Window’ of 1653 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) and ‘Still Life’ (Vienna Akademie) – are perfect examples because both are nearly flat, with nothing to give the game away as one looks at the painting from different angles. The painted window frames which occur in Dou’s paintings of this period (like this one) are intended to have this same effect of vivid reality, though the scale prevents us from ever being ‘taken in’ even momentarily. Whatever hidden symbolic meaning contemporaries may have read into the actions depicted here, they would also have recognised the virtues of cleanliness and hard work. A maidservant stands scouring a brass pan; a pewter pot and a skimmer are lying on the ledge on the right; a birdcage hangs above; behind the girl is a pump. Inscribed on the birdcage: '1663'