Millais painted this composition in 1846. In 1877, some thirty years later, Millais purchased a painting at the Royal Academy by Tito Conti (1842-19240) of the same title. There exists a photograph of his studio with Conti's painting on an easel, dating from c. 1879. The Conti painting's composition seems to derive from Millais' little early oil sketch. Millais always admired attention to detail in other artist's work and thus his admiration of the artist. A child prodigy, Millais entered the Royal Academy Schools when he was just eleven. The youngest to ever have entered the schools, he won several medals and first exhibited there in 1846, at the age of seventeen. This jewel like little miniature painted in 1847, The Introduction, depicting a young couple’s first meeting, dates from these crucial early years. Possibly a Shakespearean theme, the painting is in spirit with the earlier, literary based works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which Millais was to co-founded the next year during a meeting at his family home in Gower Street in September 1848.
London, Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries, The Brotherhood of Ruralists and the Pre-Raphaelites, June - July 2005, number 20
John Guille Millais, Life and Letters of Sir John Millais, volume I page 445, quoting Louise Joplin-Rowe, the artist's godchild: [Millais] was most true in his appreciation of other men's work, and preferred that which was very highly finished. I think he bought an example of Tito Conti's simply for the reason of its high finish. Peter Nahum, The Brotherhood of Ruralists and the Pre-Raphaelites, The Leicester Galleries 2005, number 20, illustrated