Originally commissioned to depict the "Four Ages of Love" for a pleasure pavilion by Comtesse du Barry, the famous mistress of French king, Louis XV, Fragonard delivered her four large canvases. When the countess turned them down, Fragonard went on to further develop the theme, expanding the number of scenes and installing them at a cousin's house in Southern France.

Crafting his compositions carefully and slowly, Vermeer left only a small body of work when he died in 1675. It has been estimated that it took him three to four months to finish a single picture, and his entire oeuvre may have consisted of only about fifty to sixty paintings. At present, thirty-five or thirty-six works are regarded by most scholars as autograph Vermeers, including these three in the Frick's collection, while a few additional pictures are subject to debate and several others are considered lost.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, nineteenth-century Britain’s greatest land- and seascape artist, depicted ports throughout his career, both in monumental oil paintings and in watercolors. An insatiable traveler and an artist with a deep fascination with light, topography, and local traditions, as well as with classical antiquity, Turner brought an innovative approach to the depiction of both modern and ancient ports.