This atmospheric sketch is a product of Orchardson's excursion to Venice in the spring of 1870. It was his first visit and he shared lodgings with Fred Walker, who had been before in 1868. Walker was working on The Harbour of Refuge (Tate Gallery), and also made 'a slight sketch of the house in which he lived in the City of the Lagunes, with Mr W.Q. Orchardson ... at the window' (Claude Phillips, Frederick Walker, 1897, p.55). Perhaps under Walker's influence, Orchardson devoted most of his time to open-air sketches, which he would later work up in such pictures as Moonlight on the Lagoons, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875 (private collection; Sir William Quiller Orchardson, R.A., exh. Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, etc., 1972, no.21). He was to return to Venice for ten days during his honeymoon in 1873, and again, according to his wife, 'made sketches, but nothing serious, the smells were too awful.'