Soon after his return from Kelmscott in October 1871, Rossetti began work on the oil painting 'The Bower Meadow' (now in Manchester Art Gallery). Using a canvas which already featured a landscape background painted in the company of Hunt at Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1850, Rossetti devised a clever composition, balancing seated and dancing figures in a rhythmic harmony of complementary reds and greens. For the dancing figures Rossetti made one of his rare studies from the nude, in black chalk (in a private collection); a tracing of this in red chalk, now rather faint, appears at the right side of this sheet. From this Rossetti developed one of his liveliest groups in coloured chalk. Both drawings bear inscriptions to Rossetti's friend, the watercolourist G. P. Boyce.