Like Johannes Vermeer, the Brussels-born Sweerts was rediscovered in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although his life remains more obscure than that of the Delft painter, and works by Sweerts are still being newly identified. The comparison with Vermeer is encouraged by Sweerts's closely studied light and usually quiet compositions, which, in the genre and history pictures from his Roman years (ca. 1646–55) and from his brief residence in Amsterdam (ca. 1660–61; see, for example, Clothing the Naked, acc. no. 1984.459.1), lend his images a dreamlike stillness and sense of hidden meaning.

Man Holding a Jug, however, must date from the period when the mature Sweerts worked in Brussels (ca. 1655–60), and its animation and vivid characterization were clearly inspired, in part, by similar subjects painted by the famous Antwerp artist Adriaen Brouwer, such as The Smokers (ca. 1636; acc. no. 32.100.21). Few of the peasants observed or imagined by Brouwer's followers—David Teniers the Younger, Joos van Craesbeeck, and David Ryckaert III—are quite as compelling as this good-natured artisan (to judge from his apron) turning in response to some distraction at an inn. A masterful essay in tones and textures, this new acquisition adds depth and another highlight to one of the world's great collections of Flemish art.