The portrait and genre painter John Phillip was a favourite artist of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Born in Aberdeen, at the age of nineteen Phillip moved to London to study at the Royal Academy schools, supported by Lord Panmure. While at the academy, Phillip became a member of The Clique, a group of aspirant artists organised by Richard Dadd. The Clique identified as followers of William Hogarth and David Wilkie. Like his fellow-Scot Wilkie, Phillip initially specialised in meticulously detailed paintings depicting the lives of Scottish crofters. However, in 1851 Phillip visited Spain, after he was advised to travel to southern Europe for his health. Thereafter he principally painted scenes of Spanish life, influenced by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and Diego Velázque, earning him the nickname 'Spanish Phillip'.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Spain was an increasingly fashionable source for stories of love and death; Bizet's Carmen being perhaps the most famous example. Here a wounded smuggler lies dying in the arms of his beloved, who holds a mirror before his lips. In the catalogue for the 1858 Royal Academy Exhibition, where the painting was first exhibited, Shakespeare's words from King Lear (Act V, sc.iii) 'If that [his] breath should mist or stain the stone, why, then [he] lives' accompnaied the work.  

Queen Victoria considered that no artist apart from Winterhalter painted with with the freshness of colour evident in Phillip's work, and on his death she wrote to her eldest daughter 'Were you not grieved to hear of the death of our greatest painter - Philip? His pictures were so beautiful. Darling Papa had such an admiration for him'. This painting was acquried by Queen Victoria for 650 guineas in 1858 and was given to Prince Albert as a Christmas gift that same year.

Signed and dated: JP [in monogram] 1858