A drawing of a knife-grinder, with his back to the viewer, sharpening a knife, watched by three boys on the right and a woman behind. The grinding wheel, which is rotated by means of a pedal, is cooled by water dripping from a barrel-like container. There is a preliminary sketch of the same subject, upper left. RL 6465-6513 amount to nearly one third of Avercamp's known drawings and represent the largest holding in one collection. They cover all categories of his drawings- studies of single figures, and groups, genre scenes and landscapes- and illustrate his considerable variety in finish and technique. In general the artist did not make preparatory drawings. They seem to have been made for their own sake, and some of the more finished coloured sheets were probably sold. The remainder served as a vocabulary of human behaviour as for the most part seen in the provincial town of Kampen.