Unlike the early 'Pre-Raphaelite' example sold in these Rooms 2 November 1990, lot 274c, this picture is wholly characteristic, exemplifying the artist's fairy subjects and dream-like, 'surrealist' vision. Although he has become famous in recent years, Fitzgerald remains an obscure figure, even the year of his death being in doubt. He is known to have belonged to the Maddox Street Sketching Club, and he exhibited at the British Institution and the Royal Academy, sending regularly to the latter from 1845 to 1881, and then once again, after a long interval, in 1902. He seems to have lived all his life in London.