As Robin Gibson pointed out (op. cit., p.25) 'a flurry of paintings on religious themes around 1929 seems to have been connected with Philpot's election as President of the newly constituted Guild of Catholic Artists and Craftsmen, formed to celebrate the centenary of Catholic emancipation'. The priest of St. Peter's, Morningside, was the former aesthetic poet Father John Grey. Philpot had executed in 1922 an altarpiece which he intended for the church but this seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding as he did not discover until after the picture's completion that the commission had been given to someone else (see ibid., p.22)