This was the first drawing by Ford Madox Brown to enter the Birmingham collection in 1903. It was one of several gifts from Charles Fairfax Murray received whilst the Museum and Art Gallery was gathering subscriptions to buy the rest of his Pre-Raphaelite drawings collection. It is likely that Fairfax Murray bought the drawing from the sale of Brown's household effects following his death in 1893.

Iza Duffus Hardy (1850-1922) was the daughter of Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy (1804-1878), Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office, and his second wife Lady May Anne Hardy, novelist and travel writer (1824-1891). Iza followed her mother and was also an author publishing over thirty books and numerous short stories in the 1870s and 1880s. The Brown's and the Hardy's were, according to William Michael Rossetti, close friends and he notes that both Mrs Hardy and Iza were 'warmly attached to my wife,' Brown's first daughter Lucy.
LM