This is an early work by this most romantic of British painters. After studying at the St John's Wood Academy he entered the RA schools in 1885, and studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, but he spent most of 1889-91 sailing round the British coast. By 1902 when this picture was painted Robinson was married and living in Florence. It is one of several of the intimate theme of women and children around a table in a dimly lit interior, with a central light. There are common elements to this group of pictures such as the central low green lamp with its yellow light, the high window with its steeply angled cill, the high chest of drawers, the round table, the tall chair with the barley twist chair, the bowls of soup or porridge with steam rising, and the roll of stitching with a tree motif. Our picture relates closely to a larger, later picture titled In the Depth of Winter. As Charlotte Gere has noted, ‘It is tempting to compare the interiors which are perhaps his most successful works, with those of his French contemporaries Bonnard and Vuillard; but close examination reveals that their atmosphere has less in common with the intimism that inspired the nabis than with the quietism of the Cotswold artists and authors. In Cayley Robinson’s pictures it takes on an almost sinister quality, and one feels that the figures in their airless rooms are brooding on ancient mysteries.’ With a wider appreciation his work shows obvious sympathy with both Burne-Jones and with Puvis de Chavannes.

Cecil French recalled in The Studio of 1922 his first encounter with Robinson's paintings at the Society of British Artists, noting the fusing of the 'synthetic with the intimate' - a paradox he identified as key to the artist's oeuvre: 'The potency of spell, the visionary strangeness, the almost desperate sincerity, of the new, mysterious, isolated artist brought to mind the first strenuous beginnings of the English Pre-Raphaelite group.'