 As he explained to his patron Esther Sawyer, it represented a decision to move away from the "less gay" subjects that had been the focus of his major studio paintings and to paint to enjoy himself as much as possible.Yet his interest in history was closely allied to his interest in memory, and Dickinson wanted to dedicate the picture to his brother Burgess (who had died by suicide in 1913), an intention he had harbored long before the painting began.For the painting Dickinson reused a canvas on which he had begun a self-portrait, which he scraped off and covered the remains with a red-brown paint.