Pinwell was a member of an artistic group known as the Idyllists, who were active in London from the 1850s onwards and bridged the gap between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Neo-Romantics. The group, which included Frederick Walker, John William North, Cecil Gordon Lawson, Robert Walker Macbeth and George Heming Mason, came together in the 1860s while all of the artists (except North) worked in illustration under the wood-engraver Josiah Wood, or at the illustrated newspaper The Graphic.
Pinwell’s work tends to either take scenes of everyday life, or occasionally literary episodes, as its subject matter. The present drawing is a study of the subject that he chose to be his masterwork, but his early death prevented him from progressing it further. It was exhibited in its own right at the posthumous exhibition held at the Deschamps’ Gallery in 1876.