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Job Berckheyde is best known for his city views, although he also painted church interiors, landscapes and genre pictures. He also specialized in depicting people in the course of their trade. This genre picture, depicting a notary in his office handing deeds to a man with a youth looking on, is markedly theatrical in character. The plump and successful Notary handing deeds to a fumbling client whose gaucheness as well as his dress mark him out as socially inferior, watched with amusement by the smirking apprentice.
The painting is signed and dated lower right: Hiob Berckheyde 1672.
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