This terracotta is possibly related to a monument to Jane Coke (1753-1800) of Holkham at Tittleshall, Norfolk. It may have been inspired by Roman baroque tomb sculpture. Nollekens's terracotta studies were an important means by which he worked out ideas, though he was also a prolific draughtsman, and many of his drawings are housed at the Museum. Drawings relating specifically to the monument to Mrs Coke are held at the V&A, in Sir John Soane's Museum and the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford.

Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) was a prolific sculptor of portrait busts and operated a thriving workshop in London. He spent eight years in Rome from 1762 to 1770, where he worked with Bartolomeo Cavaceppi restoring and copying antique marbles. One of these copies, his group of Castor and Pollux, is in the Museum's collection (Museum no. A.59-1940). He probably perfected his modelling of clay while he was in Rome and started to experiment in making small figures or groups. These occasionally became models for large-scale finished marbles, but many, still in his studio at his death, were simply studies in their own right, which he called pensieri (thoughts).