These four drawings all relate to Redgrave's painting 'Love and Labour' exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852. The composition was based on an engraved illustration to Milton's L'Allegro (see catalogue no. 92 in Richard Redgrave 1804-1888, exhibition catalogue, V&A Museum, 1988) and was exhibited with the quotation: 'Or if the earlier season lead / To the turned haycock in the mead'.

The painting is now untraced but it was engraved and published in The Art Journal in 1859 (see p. 205 of the above catalogue). These drawings are all listed as preliminary sketches for the composition.

Two of the drawings are signed and dated 1846 so it is likely that Redgrave was working on this composition for some time before it was exhibited. All four drawings have a number written on the verso, possibly indicating a lot number from a sale.

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This work comes from one of sixteen volumes of Royal Academy Annual Exhibition catalogues that were collected and extra-illustrated by the lawyer and antiquarian Edward Basil Jupp F.S.A. (1812 - 1877). The catalogues span the period from the first annual exhibition in 1769 up to 1875. Jupp added drawings, prints, letters and autographs by, or referring to, Academicians and other exhibitors at the Academy's annual exhibition.

E.B. Jupp was a solicitor who married Eliza Kay, daughter of the architect William Porden Kay. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a clerk of the Carpenters' Company, of which he published a history. Jupp amassed a large collection of paintings by British and Dutch artists, drawings, prints, books and porcelain most of which was sold after his death, at Christie's in February 1878.

Many of the drawings in Jupp's Royal Academy extra-illustrated volumes were bought from art sales during the 1860s. He was also acquainted with a number of contemporary artists and several drawings in the later volumes (along with many of the letters and autographs) were sent from the artists themselves.

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