Similar to Woman and Child in a Courtyard, it is undoubted that these scenes were based on views from gardens behind the houses on the west side of the canal, the Oude Gracht.

The soft lighting of the scene, coupled with De Hooch's meticulous depiction of the buildings and courtyard's bricks and mortar, elevates the painting's naturalistic qualities.

The balanced harmony is further derived from De Hooch's discernment of colour, skillfully incorporating accents of red, blue, and white throughout the composition.

Notably impactful is the silky gleam of the young girl's blue dress, artfully conveyed through the application of yellow highlights.

[1] In De Hooch's earlier genre scenes, a recurring theme involves soldiers seated around a table, engaging in smoking and drinking while being attended to by a serving woman.

The men and women depicted in these scenes exude liveliness and playful interaction, as evidenced by the easy banter between the soldiers and the maidservant in this instance.

The little girl seems to have been elevated slightly and shifted approximately one inch to the right from her initial position thus, adjusted to overlap with the intersection of the house and the rear wall of the courtyard.

This placement, along with the presence of the vibrant orange-red window shutter directly above her, works to diminish the pronounced sense of recession induced by the building's receding perspective.

[1] The standing woman's head might have been more upright as she raised her glass to a slightly higher level, and an earlier position of her foot was painted over.

These masts, likely of large rigged vessels, would be incapable of navigating Delft's 17th-century waterways, suggest either an abandoned earlier composition or canvas reuse.

Additional areas affected by abrasion encompass the little girl's face, the woman's blue apron, and the cloak of the foreground-seated man.

[1] The provenance of the replica is also unknown before the 1820's, with this painting titled differently as 'A Man Smoking and a Woman Drinking in a Courtyard', and its first noted appearance as a sale by the John Smith Gallery, in London for 300 pounds in 1822, ending up in the Mauritshuis' collection by 1947.

[8] In a watercolour portrayal of a Dutch interior dated 1783 by W. J. Laquy, a German artist active in Amsterdam, the Washington painting is shown hanging on the rear wall.