Fildes made his name with social realist subjects like the famous Applicants for Admission to a casual Ward (Royal Holloway and New Bedford College) exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, and The Widower (R.A. 1876), a sketch for which was sold in these Rooms on 13 March 1992, lot 166. Devotion is typical of the popular sentimental subjects which he also painted, inspired by his travels on the continent. He was already making regular visits to Venice, where he found plentiful material for genre subjects.

Contemporary critics at the time suggested that Fildes' election to the Academy had made him grow critical of his technique as a painter and that his seeking the light and colour of Venice was his method of improvement. Fildes never actually admitted this himself but there is no doubt that the people and the architecture of the city were condusive to inspiring the artist to return continuously over the next decade. It is infact one of the artist's Venetian subject pictures that currently holds the auction record, Venetian life sold in these rooms on 24 November 1989 for ¨308,000. Devotion was painted two years prior to this work and concurrently with another of Fildes' masterpieces The Village Wedding, demonstrating that at this time the artist was at the height of his prowess.