Born in Paris in 1823, Sophie Gengembre Anderson began her career as a lithographer and painter of portraits before focusing on genre painting of children and women, usually in rural settings. Though largely self-taught, her father, Charles Antoine Colomb Gengembre, was an architect and artist as was one her two brothers, Henry P. Gengembre (b. 1825). Her family left France for the United States to escape the 1848 Revolution and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she met her future husband, the British genre artist Walter Anderson. The couple moved to London in 1854 where she exhibited regularly. 

Anderson revisited the theme of children and animals throughout her painted oeuvre, the present work being a particularly tender example. Anderson's work is in the collection of numerous museums and galleries throughout the United Kingdom and the world record price of more than £1 million for one of her paintings, No Walk Today, was achieved at Sotheby's in London in 2008.