The plaque on the lid of this box is painted with a barefoot urchin pausing to lean on a rock and smoke his pipe on his way to deliver a basket of fish while urging a curious dog to walk on rather than sniff at his fishy trousers. The subject, or rather the figure’s pose, derives originally from an engraving by Jean Jacques Leveau (1729–1786) entitled Les amans à la pêche, after Claude Joseph Vernet (1714–1789). A slight variant of this figure, accompanied by his seated lover, appears on a plaque on a box with crimson camaïeu marine subjects signed by Ignaz Peter Krafft in the Wallace Collection, London. Both works are apparently by the same hand. A example of the variant composition, painted by another artist, appears on a slightly later box by Les Frères Toussaint in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
As a further example of the parallels to be detected between the decoration of snuffboxes and textile design, it is interesting to note how the enamelled pellet-scattered engine-turned ground is reminiscent of the polka-dot motif seen in fabric samples included in a merchant’s sample book, datable to 1763–1764, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

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