Smetham is one of the most exciting associates of The Pre-Raphaelites. The son of a Wesleyan minister, he was inspired to be an artist by meeting Peter de Wint while living in Lincolnshire and his enthusiasm later fired by reading Ruskin's Modern Painters. He met Ruskin and Rossetti in 1854, however he rejected the pursuit of minute particulars which defined Pre-Raphaelitism; instead he envisaged a magical world suffused with colour. He took his subjects from the Bible, literature and fable, sometimes adopting a Symbolist bent.