The two horses depicted in this painting, Imaum the grey and Mustafa the bay, had been presented to Prince Albert in 1840 by the Imam of Muscat [Oman]. The woman on the left is an exoticised figure of a stable girl in Eastern dress, feeding the horses with grains that she has gathered in her apron. 

Thomas Woodward was an animal painter, who exhibited often at the Royal Academy, and was encouraged by its President, Sir Benjamin West, and later by Sir Edwin Landseer, who may have introduced him to the Prince Consort.

The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844.