A.E. Mulready, who so far as is known was not related to William Mulready, belonged to the Cranbrook Colony, the group of artists who gathered round Thomas Webster when he settled at this small town not far from Tunbridge Wells in 1856. All specialised in genre subjects of a sentimental nature, but Mulready was unique in concentrating on the life of the London streets. The present picture is typical of him both in theme and composition. The three figures in the background appear, with variations, in a number of his works, sometimes moving to the foreground plane, as in A Sunny Day, 1874 (repr. Graham Reynolds, Victorian Painting, 1966, pl.34).