When Australian-born Menpes turned twenty, his family moved back to Britain. After meeting Whistler on a sketching tour in Brittany in 1880, and under his influence, he developed a fascination with all things Japanese. Menpes actually went to Japan in 1887, the first of many travels East. Whistler never did go, and, rather jealously, suggested that Menpes had ‘stolen’ his ideas from him. In Japan, Menpes discussed the techniques and methods of Japanese art with Japanese artists, and observed and painted scenes of Japanese town-life, customs and rituals.

The present work relates to Menpes' illustration of the same subject reproduced in Japan, A Record in Colour by Mortimer Menpes, Transcribed by Dorothy Menpes, London, 1901, p. 190, no. 72.