The picture betrays the influence of Stock's mentor G.F. Watts, both in the way it suggests a symbolist dimension to an essentially genre subject and in its rich 'Venetian' colours. It was one of three pictures which the artist exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1894, the others - Death turning away from the Innocence of a Child and Sleep and Twilight - being in a more thoroughgoing symbolist vein.

A pencil version, larger and with significant differences, was exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours the following year (see lot 66)