Watercolour paintings of North African, Turkish or Egyptian domestic scenes became very popular in the nineteenth century. The increasing ease of travel meant that many more artists, illustrators, travellers and tourists were able to sketch and paint rapidly in watercolour those places they had previously known only from written accounts.

Men sitting smoking either very long stemmed cherry-wood pipes, or ornate water-filled hookahs, were a common sight in Turkey and Egypt. Travellers were offered these pipes as part of the hospitality they received, and most devotees of coffee-houses were smokers as well. The contrast between the rather plain clay or wooden European pipes and the ornate eastern equipment was often remarked on.

Alfred William Hassam (1842-69) was a painter and stained glass designer who was born in London, the son of a vellum binder. He may have trained at the Central School of Art (later the Royal College of Art) in South Kensington, or one of the other art and design schools supervised by the South Kensington-based Department of Science and Art. In the early 1860s he joined the London stained glass firm of Heaton, Butler and Bayne, where he is thought to have served as assistant to Robert Turnill Bayne. In 1865 he won a prize for his stained glass design for the north staircase of the South Kensington Museum; the V&A collection includes his stained glass panel (V&A 435-1865) which was exhibited at the Museum in 1865. During the late 1860s Hassam exhibited portraits and historical subjects at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists. He died in Hastings at the age of 27. This intensely coloured scene seems to show the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites. He is not known to have visited the Near East, and the work is presumed to have been painted in a London studio.