This head study was made for The Golden Stairs in the mid 1870s, and then worked up into a saleable painting after 1894 where it appear in the rough state in the Garden Studio.
This is a study for the head of the fourth figure from the top (holding a trumpet) in The Golden Stairs, first exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, 1880, no. 120, and later in the Tate Gallery, London. Sotheby's 2004