A musical score on a reading stand, a violin and a bow, a lute, a candlestick and books on a ledge - an overdoor

The pupil of Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Henri-Horace Roland de la Porte was born in Paris and was approved by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1761 as a 'painter of animals and fruit'. He was trained in the grand manner of the French nature morte developed during the reign of Louis XIV. Along with Chardin, with whom he competed in the same Salons and for the same clients, Roland de la Porte started to develop a new style of still life painting, placing greater emphasis on common household objects and on a more casual arrangement of the elements within the composition. His abilities were recognized by Denis Diderot who, despite being Chardin's great champion, sometimes grudgingly complemented Roland de la Porte on his works. In the strongly competitive climate created by Chardin and his supporters, Roland de la Porte successfully sold paintings, was praised for his work and won commissions from collectors and connoisseurs alike, including the Marquis de Marigny.

Roland de la Porte must have considered the present composition particularly successful, as he employed it again for another, slightly wider overdoor, in which the same objects are again placed on a stone ledge, with an addition of some drapery and a bassoon, which replaces the candlestick at right (see M. Faré, op. cit., p. 193, fig. 288).