This watercolour was commissioned by Alfred Lichtwark, head of the Hamburger Kunsthalle art museum. Lichtwark maintained that art should be an integral part of city life and, accordingly, he commissioned artists to portray various aspects of Hamburg. Most of the works in this series were undertaken by German artists, but Lichtwark also engaged Nordic artists, among them the Danish artist Laurits Tuxen and the Norwegian Fritz Thaulow as well as Zorn.