Similar in manner to the work of Francis Wheatley, this late 18th century painting demonstrates the period’s love of genre pictures; paintings of subjects from everyday life, usually small in scale. Developed particularly in Holland in the 17th century, most typically with scenes of peasant life or drinking in taverns, simpler genre painting emerged in later eighteenth century England in the works of such artists as George and Henry Morland, and Wheatley. Through the popular craze of decorative prints these artists’ pictures were distributed far and wide and would have been extremely influential to younger painters, this being one such example.