This painting is a late copy of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1628, National Gallery of Ireland, inv. no. 513), a collaborative work by Peter Paul Rubens, who would have painted the figures, and Jan Brueghel II, who would have painted the landscape.

Mary sits at Christ's feet, listening with a book closed on her lap, while Martha reproaches her sister for her laziness. The women embody the respective virtues of the active and contemplative life. Here the New Testament episode is set in a kitchen, where the religious subject is combined with a naturalistic still life.

The painting illustrates a passage from the Gospel of Luke in which Christ says to Martha: 'Thou are anxious and troubled about many things. But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her' (Luke 10. 38-42).

For the original painting by Rubens and Jan Brueghel II, see Oldfield, D., Later Flemish Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland. The Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, Dublin, 1992, pp. 13-18. Only the figures of the Bowes Museum painting were copied from the Dublin version, and the scene is set in a domestic interior, as was traditional in depictions of this subject. As Oldfield remarks, the setting depicted in the Dublin painting is unusual, in that the religious episode takes place on an outdoor terrace. The still life in the Bowes Museum painting is closer to the version at the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (inv. 449). The figure of Mary appears notably altered in respect to the same figure in the Dublin version. Her elaborate dress and hairstyle contrast with Martha's simple attire and seem to identify Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene. The quarrelling animals suggest the disagreement between the sisters.

The theme was popular among Rubens's pupils, who reproduced it with some variations. Erasmus Quellinus II painted different versions of the subject in collaboration with Jan Fyt (Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille) and with Adriaen van Utrecht (Musée des Beaux Arts, Valenciennes).

The Bowes Museum painting is noted in the manuscript catalogue as having come from a 'Russian collection'.