The watercolour illustrates a line in Browning's Ring and the Book, first published in 1868. It was one of twenty watercolours with subjects from Browning which the artist exhibited at the Dowdeswell Galleries in 1909, but, as the catalogue points out, was not among those published in two recent editions of Browning's poetry which she had illustrated: Pippa Passes and Men and Women (1908) and Dramatis Personae; and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1909).