Santa Maura, now called Levkás, is one of the Ionian Islands just off Akasnania on the Greek mainland. When Lear's friend Franklin Lushington was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court at Corfu, then the headquarters of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, Lear accompanied him there in 1855; he had alreadly spent a short time there in 1842 and was to go again several times in the early 1860s.

A larger version of this scene, 14½ x 21in., dated 12-13 April 1863, was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, in 1975, no. 57, and at the Fine Art Society in 1983, no. 40