By the 18th Century, Donnybrook fair was a two week festival held in August on Donnybrook Green, Dublin and had become much more a site of public entertainment and drinking than a traditional fair for the sale of horses and cattle. In the early 19th Century attempts began to be made to have it abolished. In 1855 the leasehold for the fair was bought by The Committee for the Abolition of Donnybrook Fair, and it was finally closed down. Around this time the name of the fair became a slang term for a brawl or riot.
Nicol depicted the fair in a monumental painting now at Tate Britain, as well as smaller individual figures such as this one.