During his short career, Willem Buytewech—nicknamed Geestige Willem (Inventive or Witty Willem) by his contemporaries—made an important and highly personal contribution to the new realism in Dutch art. Together with pioneering artists like Hendrick Goltzius, Frans Hals, and the cousins Jan and Esaias van de Velde, Buytewech heralded the golden age of Dutch art.

Here, he depicts a poultry market in an imaginary Dutch town. Birds dead and alive are everywhere, in baskets and cages, walking around looking for food, and hanging in bundles on a stick. The drawing belongs to a group of at least twelve sheets depicting markets in various Dutch towns (the Museum also acquired the group's title page, dated 1621; acc. no. 2002.121). This series possibly symbolized the months of the year and may have been intended for prints, although no etchings or engravings of these particular subjects are known. The series also could have been made for the art market, since collecting drawings was already a cherished pastime in the Netherlands at the beginning of the seventeenth century.