Adrian Stokes, ‘a sensitive and glowing colourist’ (C Lewis Hind), came to live in St. Ives in Cornwall in 1886 at the invitation of Stanhope Forbes. He and his painter wife Marianne had spent time in France, at Fontainebleau, where he met the Barbizon painters, and at Pont-Aven, where, through his wife, he became a firm friend of the Danish artist Peder Severin Krøyer. He remembered early advice from Whistler, who was kind to him, saying ‘the first moment is the artist‘s moment’, and applied this advice to his impressionist method.

The exhibition where this painting was first shown was reviewed in 1907:

The fruit of a stay in the picturesque lands of Austria-Hungary. Rarely has Mr Stokes found scenes that have roused to such musical effect the rich sense of colour that is in him. All the purity of luminous, almost gem-like colour has been drawn from him by his visit