This watercolour is very comparable, if not indeed a pair, to one entitled In the Temple of Venus, similarly signed and dated '23/4/63' and inscribed on the back 'Made by Simeon Solomon at his room, 22 Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, April 1863' (private collection, photograph in Witt Library). The two pictures represent an early phase in Solomon's move from Jewish to classical themes in the 1860s, a move which reflects the development of 'aesthetic' values at this date. His classicism was to find bolder expression in Habet, a painting inspired by White Melville's novel The Gladiators exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865, and in a group of works on the theme of Bacchus; these include the well-known half-length at Birmingham, shown at the RA of 1867 and admired by Walter Pater, and the handsome watercolour which appeared at the Dudley Gallery the following year and was sold in these Rooms on 11 June 1993, lot 91 (repr. in cat.)