Shannon does not appear to have painted a picture of this subject, and there is certainly no related lithograph. It was, however, a theme that preoccupied his friend Charles Ricketts, who treated it as a woodcut in The Parables, published by the Vale Press in 1903, and in a number of easel paintings. There is a close parallel here with Shannon's painting The Wise and Foolish Virgins, 1919. 20 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), which takes as its subject another parable which had long been a source of inspiration to Ricketts (see The Last Romantics, exh. Barbican Art Gallery, 1989, no. 257).

Shannon's figures often bear a resemblance to himself or Ricketts, and that of the Good Samarian is no exception, having something of the 'look' of Ricketts