This group derives ultimately from Rodin's 'Gates of Hell'. Together with an earlier marble version, ordered in 1898 and delivered in 1900, it derives from an original plaster in the Musée Rodin in Paris. The small scale of the figures relative to the roughly worked block suggests the emancipation of the spirit from brute matter. The title implies a contrast between the mundane and the ethereal. This work was purchased by Gwendoline Davies in 1914.