This watercolour is one of a series 'to illustrate the Passions', the first examples of which date from 1853, the last from 1857. At the time of the Tate Gallery exhibition in 1974, twenty-five examples were known, as well as four further works untraced since the Sir Charles Hood sale at Christie's on 28 March 1870.

Patricia Allderidge, in the Tate Gallery's exhibition catalogue, writes that 'the symbolism of this scene is obscure, though there is a suggestion of family portraiture in the air...'. As she points out, the distant landscape, taken from one of the sketchbooks of 1842-3 now in the Victorian and Albert Museum, suggests the Mediterranean, and the figures in the background, probably taken from the life, are in Greek costume, Dadd went to Greece and the Middle East with Sir Thomas Phillips as his draughtsman on the grand tour, and the drawing may reflect Dadd's recollections of his inferior role: it was on this journey that Dadd suffered his first mental attacks, one symptom being growing hostility towards Phillips who was led to seek medical advice. Alternatively the older man riding on the younger man's shoulders could be Dadd's father, whom Dadd had murdered later in 1843 after his return from the Middle East.

As Patricia Allderidge points out, Dadd has muddled two Shakespearian quotations, 'Vaulting ambition, which o'er leaps itself', which comes from Macbeth, Act I, scene vii, and 'It is the green-eyed monster', meaning Jealousy, not Ambition, 'which doth mock/The meat it feeds on', which comes from Othello, Act III, scene iii