The watercolour seems to be one of a group that Burne-Jones made when he was staying with Spencer Stanhope at Cobham in June 1863. Others, including two in the Birmingham Art Gallery, were included in the Arts Council's Burne-Jones Exhibition, 1975-6, nos. 48 and 246-7. They relate to such paintings of the period as The Merciful Knight (Birmingham) and Green Summer (private collection).
One of a small group of landscapes made by Burne-Jones in 1863, three of which are in the Birmingham Collection. It has been suggested by some scholars that these landscapes served as background studies for Burne-Jones's 1863 work, The Merciful Knight, also in Birmingham's Collection. His granddaughter, Angela Thirkell, who presented these landscapes to Birmingham stated that these were in fact used for the 1864 watercolour Green Summer (Private Collection). It was typical at the time for Burne-Jones to go out into the landscape and then transfer his findings onto his final work as backgrounds. This was probably made in Cobham, Surrey, whilst he stayed there with his friend, the artist John Roddam Spencer Stanhope.
Generalized landscapes such as this, painted in the early 1860s, became an important source for artists in the so-called "Poetry without grammar school", including Robert Bateman, Edward Clifford, Walter Crane and Harry Wooldridge.