This unsigned small panel was attributed to François Verwilt when it entered the Rijksmuseum in 1947. Although that artist’s oeuvre comprises genre scenes, this man dancing with a dog differs so much in brushwork and modelling from his other work that the assessment is no longer tenable. The subject suggests that it is more likely to be by Hendrick Bogaert.5 Bogaert regularly produced interiors of inns with peasants making music, often with violins, and dancing. Leaving aside two such horizontal pictures with a person dancing,6 a small vertical panel that was auctioned in London in 1994 provides a reasonable point of comparison with the one in the Rijksmuseum.7 Bogaert’s scenes usually contain numerous figures, but in that simpler painting there are just three men around a hearth, one of them playing a violin, another dancing. The latter is as wooden as the one here. Bogaert depicted similar bearded men quite often, as in the two aforementioned horizontal pieces and in Inn with Brawling Peasants.8 The Amsterdam work is far more restrained than the panel sold in 1994. The difference can be explained by the worn condition of the paint. The dark passage in the right background proves to be a later intervention. As Bogaert’s pictures eventually became more fluently done – a case in point being a 1672 group portrait9 – and the brushstrokes in the Rijksmuseum painting are still clearly visible, it seems plausible that Man Dancing with a Dog is from the middle years of Bogaert’s career, that is to say 1655-65, which fits in neatly with the dendrochronological results.10 Richard Harmanni, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements