In the inventory of March 1928, when this picture hung in the ‘Lounge Hall’, it was described as ‘Anthonie Palamedesz 1600 1673, interior of barn, soldiers dicing on a drumhead (on panel) 18in by 27in’. The picture frame bears a label, ‘Antonie Palamedesz. Palmeses Stevers’.

According to the Dutch painter and biographer Arnold Houbraken, Anthonie Palamedes’s father was a Flemish sculptor who travelled to England and worked for James I. Palamedes and his brother were brought up in Delft. Anthonie was apprenticed to the portrait and court painter Michiel van Mierevelt (1567–1641) and on 6 December 1621 was admitted to the city’s Guild of St Luke. An alternative attribution may be made to the Dutch painter Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp (1612–1642), whose work the painting also resembles. Cuyp, who lived and worked in Dordrecht, was the son of a glass painter. He was the uncle of the more renowned painter Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691).

The present painting depicts the interior of a tavern with a group of figures possibly soldiers drinking and playing dice on an upturned drum. As with the other Dutch and Flemish paintings at Trewithen, this painting may have come from the collection of John Heywood Hawkins (1802–1877) at Bignor Park, Sussex.