After meeting Whistler on a sketching tour in Brittany in 1880, Menpes developed a fascination with all things Japanese. Unlike Whistler, Menpes actually went to Japan, his 1887 journey being the first of many travels East. There, Menpes discussed the techniques and methods of Japanese art with Japanese artists, and observed and painted scenes of Japanese town-life, customs and rituals. While this decoratively framed shopfront scene was likely exhibited in Menpes' one-man show at the Dowdeswell Galleries in 1897, a version of it appeared a few years later with the title 'Umbrellas and Commerce' in his book Japan, a Record in Colour (A&C Black, 1901). In it, he remembers his 'first rainy day in Japan. I went out in the wet and stood there, hatless but perfectly happy, watching the innocent shops light up one by one, and the forest of yellow oil-paper umbrellas with the light shining through looking like circles of gold, ever moving and changing in the purple tones of the street' (99-100).