The design was made in 1866 for a light in the East window of Townhead Blochairn Parish Church, Glasgow, being listed by Burne-Jones in his account book as one of '4 fogies. Moses & Co. (7 each'. It was subsequently re-used many times. A.C. Sewter (op. cit., p. 299) lists fifteen further locations, incuding Llandaff Cathedral (1868; Sewter, I, 1974, pl. 284, the figure here being reversed), St Mary's, Bloxham (1869; Sewter, pls. 296, 299), and St Andrew's College Chapel at Grahamstown, South Africa, which received a version as late as 1919. A drapery study which may be connected with the figure is in the Birmingham Art Gallery (158'04; Sewter, pl. 287), and the cartoon for King David, another of the '4 fogies' in the Townhead window, belongs to Ohio State University.

As the inscription states, the cartoon was bought from Morris & Co. by Edward Clifford in October 1903. The design was to appear in a number of windows made later than this, so some form of reproduction, possibly photographic, must have been used. Clifford proceeded to put a wash over the lower portion of the cartoon to make it match the upper part, which, not surprisingly in view of the amount of re-using, had become somewhat stained. He was ideally equipped to do this since he had known Burne-Jones from the 1860s, owned examples of his work, and had copied many of his early watercolours. For an example of his own work, see lot .....