The subject of this early painting (Pinwell was 26), exhibited in the Dudley Gallery in 1868 as Strolling Players, was adapted from a wood cut published the year before. At the Dudley it was noticed by The Times, who had some advice for the young artist:

a tired-out mountebank family discovered sleeping under a shed by a party of mowers going out to their work in early morning (300), by Mr. Pinwell, but for some discordant blots and spots of colour in the background would satisfy as a whole, whereas it now satisfies in part only, though its best points are in the most difficult and important parts of the picture. If Mr. Pinwell would strike out his green tree and subdue the pillar behind his group of mowers, he would give full effect to the rare merit of his figures in drawing, lighting, and expression.

The Times 4 February 1868 p 4

Pinwell was humbly born, the son of a builder and a laundress, was but scantily trained and had to struggle to make his way. He was given an initial opportunity to illustrate popular poems in pretty books in black and white, but then a year or two later he would recycle these drawings as larger watercolours for exhibition, of which process this is an early example; he had made the original drawing for a touching poem called Journey's End, about the discovery of an itinerant French acrobat who had died of exhaustion in the night, whilst his wife and child slept on. For the exhibited watercolour, Pinwell gave the picture a different title and resurrected the acrobat, changing the attitude of his head to sleeping repose, giving him a healthy complexion and arranging his arm to rest along a wooden stile. He made the baby visible, hidden in the mother's cloak in the wood cut, and transposed the scene from the Loire valley to England, decorating the farmhands' hats with flowers as if for May Day celebrations, changed the French geese to English sheep, replaced their sleeping performing dog with a sheepdog in the yard and added a drum.