The picture was commissioned by Somerset Beaumont, an early patron of Crane's, in Rome, when the artist was living there during the winter of 1872-3 towards the end of an extended honeymoon. As Crane later recalled in his Reminiscences, Beaumont found me at work upon a design conceived some time before, suggested by Shelley's lines on "The Death of the Year", a procession of the Months following the bier of the Year, preceded by a winged figure swinging incense, and a priest-like one in a cope reading from a book and passing into a pillared porch of a temple--the House of Time...Taking a liking to this processional picture, and finding it already bought, [Mr. Beaumont] commissioned me to paint him a similar subject, which I afterwards carried out in oil on returning to England, and entitled "The Advent of Spring"...Spring appeared robed and crowned, her train held up by amorini, and she walked under a canopy supported by four maidens; before her were piping shepherds and nymphs dancing, and others trooped behind. At the end of the procession, which emerged from a wood, a figure cloaked in grey was shown seizing one of the nymphs and snatching flowers from her apron, suggesting a last assault of wintry weather. The green hilly landscape, interspersed with buildings and blossoming trees, was more or less founded on, or reminiscent of, some of my Roman studies."

The Death of the Year, the processional picture painted in Rome in 1872 which inspired Beaumont to commission The Advent of Spring, was sold by Christie's in London on 27 October 1987, lot 152.