This relief was originally commissioned by Frederick Augustus Hervey, Bishop of Derry, later 4th Earl of Bristol (1730-1803), who ordered it to be undertaken in marble when he was in Rome in 1777 (where Thomas Banks was working), only to countermand the commission the following year. The marble had been roughly blocked out by then, and was finished at a later date, after the artist's return to Britain. It was later given by his daughter, Mrs Lavinia Forster, to the National Gallery, London. It was subsequently transferred to the V&A. A plaster version, probably the original model, is now in Sir John Soane's Museum, London.

People
Thomas Banks (1735-1805) was apprenticed to a London mason, but also spent time working alongside the sculptor Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781). He enrolled in the life classes held at the St Martin's Lane Academy, and later at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1772 he became the first sculptor to win the Royal Academy's three-year travelling stipend, and went with his wife to Rome, where he eventually spent seven years. He specialised in ideal works, most of which were executed in Rome for British patrons, although he continued to produce similar work after his return to London. He was made a Royal Academician in 1786. Banks was one of the most original British Neo-classical sculptors, who dedicated his work to the antique spirit rather than to the fashionable classical style alone.

Subject Depicted
The subject is taken from Homer's epic poem The Iliad (Book XVIII). The Greek hero Achilles, grief-stricken by the death of his friend and companion at arms, Patroclus, is comforted by his mother, the goddess Thetis and seven of her nymphs, summoned from the deep. The emotional intensity of the piece, and the somewhat eroticised emphasis of the figures, owe much to Banks's friend in Rome, the Swiss painter Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), who made extremes of feeling and sexuality something of a specialism in his own art.