Adrian Scott Stokes RA was an influential English landscape painter celebrated for his plein air painting and his leadership within the St Ives artists' colony in Cornwall. Originally intended for a career in the Navy, on account of his artistic promise he was encouraged to join the Royal Academy Schools, enrolling in 1872 and exhibited his first work at the Academy in 1876. That same year he relocated to France, where he spent a decade immersing himself in French realism and the Barbizon style, painting en plein air.

While working in Brittany, he met and married the Austrian painter Marianne Preindlsberger (Marianne Stokes), establishing a prolific, lifelong creative partnership that saw them travel and paint extensively across Europe. This included summers spent alongside the famous Skagen Painters in Denmark and extended journeys through the Austrian Tyrol, Italy, and Hungary. Upon returning to England, Stokes became a foundational pillar of the Cornish art scene, serving as the first President of the St Ives Society of Arts in 1890. In his later career, his artistic style transitioned from soft, atmospheric depictions of coastal horizons and skies to vibrant, highly stylized decorative landscapes of Southern Europe. Elected a full Royal Academician in 1919 and author of the definitive 1925 instructional text Landscape Painting, his works are held in public collections including the Tate, the Government Art Collection and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. 

The present work closely relates to a larger version held within Guildhall Art Gallery, London. It was purchased from the artist by the sculptor Sir George Frampton (1860-1928), whose most famous work is Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, commissioned directly by J.M Barrie. Stokes and Frampton were well-acquainted contemporaries moving within the same circles of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Frampton was also a collector of Marianne Stokes' paintings. The present example passed to Sir George Frampton's son, George Vernon Meredith Frampton,, R.A. (1894-1984), another artist renowned notably for his stylised portraits from the 1920s-40s.