At Tangier

'So enthused was he by his first trip to North Africa in 1891, Lavery returned the following year with more ambitious plans. On the second trip he wanted to paint a large upright canvas depicting 'A Moorish Dance', (private collection), perhaps in response to Sargent's canvases of Javanese dancers, painted at the Exposition Universelle in 1889. He was aware of treatments of similar themes by his friend Arthur Melville. Many small studies of single figures were produced, some of which, like the present example, are very vivid in colouring - in contrast to the generally more monochromatic works produced on the first Tangier sojourn'.
(Professor Kenneth McConkey, private correspondence, 1998).