In the 1917 and 1921 Shipley catalogues, this work was attributed to the Dutch school. By the 1951 catalogue, it had been attributed to Egbert van Heemskerck the Elder. In 1982, in a letter addressed to Miss Joan Chowdry, then curator of the Shipley Art Gallery, Robert Raines discusses the attribution to van Heemskerck, mentioning that he painted at least three Grace Before Meat scenes. Raines believed the composition of the Shipley painting to be in keeping with known works by Heemskerck, though he expressed doubt about the left hand figure, which he felt was not like his usual women. He concluded that the painting was unlikely to be by Heemskerck, and in this agreed with the 1977 opinion of Charlotte Miller, who thought the work to be a poor nineteenth-century imitation of Heemskerck. In 2002, the Pilgrim Trust researcher Caroline Worthington, however, reattributed the painting to ''manner of'' Cornelis Dusart, an immensely productive painter, draughtsman and printmaker, a pupil of Adriaen van Ostade, and taking on the latters studio after his death. His graphic art was the most influential contribution he made to Dutch seventeenth-century art. This work is painted on an old engraved copperplate, the back engraved with the Virgin in an oval frame with putti in the corners and an inscription. Identifying this print would give an earliest possible date and perhaps origin for the painting.