[1] Pieter van Roestraten was born in Haarlem in 1630 and baptized on 21 April 1630 as the son of Gerrit Maertenszoon and Sara Meijnerts.

On 6 June 1654 he had banns posted to marry a daughter of Frans Hals called Adriaentje who was six year his elder.

[2] In the same year Reynier Hals, his brother-in-law, made in Amsterdam a disposition for van Roestraten and the Flemish genre painter Daniël Boone.

The same year he suffered a hip injury during the great fire of London, which caused him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

[2] Van Roestraten was likely introduced to king Charles II by Sir Peter Lely on the condition that he paint no portraits.

This put him in close proximity to the Palace of Whitehall and to the studios of other artists, including Peter Lely and John Michael Wright.

The objects usually imply a vanitas meaning as they evoke the transience and emptiness of wealth and earthly glory and point to the inevitable extinction of each human life.

The book is open at a print of a laughing Democritus inscribed in Latin with lines which can be translated as: 'Everyone is sick from birth / vanity is ruining the world'.

The picture conveys a moral message, reflected in the old man's raised finger: beware of sinful behaviour.