In the later 19th century, Qajar artists began to imitate the art of the Safavid period. In ceramics, Qajar potters, such as Ali Muhammad Isfahani, copied the colourful, monumental seventeenth-century tile panels that decorated palaces in Isfahan. Many of these included elegant courtiers drinking wine in lush gardens (see for example V&A 139-1891), similar subjects are depicted in Isfahan miniatures. From the 1630s onwards more and more Europeans, merchants and travellers, visited the cosmopolitan court in Isfahan, a theme which is reflected in this depiction. This single tile reproduces one of these multi-tiled picnic scenes.

This tile was commissioned around 1884-5, by a French composer of military music, Alfred Lemaire (1842-1907). From 1868, he was working at Tehran's Dar al Funun polytechnic college, training the staff to teach music; he later composed Iran's first national anthem. The tile is part of a set for a fireplace surround, completed for him in the same year (see V&A 510, 511, 512 & 522-1889). By 1889, they were sent to Paris for sale at Iran's national displays in the international exhibition.