This painting was once ascribed to Albert Moore, Graham Robertson's first instructor. At the age of 14, Robertson began a year-long pupillage with Moore, who, as Robertson remembered, 'always [made] his pupils work exactly in his method while they were under him' (Time Was, p 60). It was a slow and laborious process, beginning with charcoal cartoons, followed by dozens of chalk drapery studies; when the studies were done, Moore would paint an oil sketch of the composition in monochrome, and then 'came a thin, fluid painting very delicate in colour ... Next came heavy impasto, strong and rather hot in colour, over which, when dry, was passed a veil of semi-opaque grey, and on this was wrought the third and final painting, thin and delicate like the first' (p 60).

Moore acknowledged to his pupils that 'You will not want to paint as I do when you are doing work of your own' (p 60). Robertson, admittedly, was quick to abandon his teacher's method, trading it instead for the more linear style of Burne-Jones: 'After the hard and fast rules of Albert Moore and his exact knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of his material, Burne-Jones's methods seemed to me very amazing' (p 83) Still, many artists like Robert Fowler remained in the sphere of Moore's Neoclassical influence. Unlike Robertson, Fowler's 'sympathies are evidently with classic art, and he belongs to that small group of painters at the head of whom stand Poynter, Leighton, Alma Tadema, and Albert Moore' (Leicester Chronicle, 30 Dec 1876, p 7).