The picture dates from about 1878 and belongs to the large group of works with nautical settings which Tissot painted during his years in London (1871-82). From the outset Thames-side taverns were a favourite background for these pictures, featuring for instance in An Interesting Story (Melbourne), an eighteenth-century costume piece of 1872, and The Captain's Daughter (Southampton), a modern subject of 1873; but Mrs Newton had entered Tissot's life in 1876, and she appears twice in the present picture, seated both full-face and in profile perdu on the terrace of the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich. This setting no doubt appealed to Tissot not only on account of its maritime connotations but because it allowed him to introduce a view of the Greenwich Hospital. He was always alive to the charm of monumental architecture, introducing it into such works as his early masterpiece Le Cercle de la rue Royale (1868; private collection, Paris); London Visitors (1874; Toledo), a scene set on the steps of the National Gallery; and A Convalescent (c.1878; Manchester), in which Mrs Newton appears against the magnificent neo-classical architecture of Regent's Park. Minus the figures, the setting of The Terrace of the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich was also the subject of one of Tissot's finest etchings (Michael Wentworth, James Tissot: Catalogue Raisonné of his Prints, Minneapolis, 1978, no.36).