Rooke was Burne-Jones's longest-serving assistant, joining his studio in 1869 and continuing to work for him until Burne-Jones's death in 1898. He painted at least two views of the garden at The Grange, Burne-Jones's London house in North End Road, Fulham (private collection), and it is conceivable that the present picture is another. Admittedly it was painted six years after Burne-Jones's death, but the house was occupied at this time by Charles Fairfax Murray, who had been Rooke's fellow assistant in Burne-Jones's studio. By this date Murray was mainly active as a dealer, and he used the house as a repository for his works of art. Moreover, evidence that Rooke continued to record Burne-Jones's homes after his master's death exists in the form of a painting, executed in 1902, of the garden at North End House, Rottingdean, Burne-Jones's country retreat on the Sussex coast (Sotheby's, London, 23 June 1981, lot 43, repr. in cat.).

A handsome Georgian house once occupied by the novelist Samuel Richardson, The Grange was demolished in 1957 and the site is now covered with council flats.

If the picture does not represent the garden at The Grange, the subject may be Rooke's own garden or that of one of his neighbours in Bedford Park. The artist settled in Norman Shaw's 'aesthetic' garden suburb in Chiswick in the late 1870s, and remained there until his death, just short of his hundredth birthday, in 1942.