This loosely sketched scene shows a woman attending to a child as it relieves itself, indifferent to the hustle and bustle occurring around them. In the distant background a man walks a fattened hog to the left while a fisherman carrying a pole and two oars on his shoulders walks towards the slaughterhouse where a pig is butchered. Lambert Doomer’s quick spontaneous line work and swift application of wash suggests he recorded the busy scene from life, perhaps during November, a time when pigs were slaughtered to provide Dutch farm families with their primary food source for the winter months.
