Cedric Morris was a remarkable animal painter. In 1936 he stated his intention as 'to provoke a lively sympathy with the mood of the birds which ornithological exactitude may tend to destroy'. The birds in the foreground are jays. Stoke-by-Nayland was near Morris's home at Pound Farm, outside Higham, Suffolk. In 1940 he and his companion Lett Haines moved a few miles to Hadleigh, where they re-established the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing after its original premises were destroyed by fire.