The present pair of watercolors are characteristic of the works produced by Wheatley following his return from Ireland in 1783. The fashion in France for sentimental genre and pastoral subjects and fancy pictures, as practised by artists such as François Boucher (1703-1770), Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) and Pierre-Alexandre Wille (1748-1821) travelled across the Channel and found favour in Britain. Wheatley emerged as one of the pre-eminent exponents of this new fashion, although he adapted the style and subject matter to suit British taste, which demanded less sentimentality and a greater degree of realism.

Wheatley exhibited his first Fancy Picture, The Amorous Sportsman, at the Royal Academy in 1785. The following year he exhibited two works, Brickmakers and Girl making cabbage nets at a cottage door. The latter appears to be an oil version of one of the present watercolors, Industry, which was engraved and variously published under the titles The Industrious Cottager and Industry.

In Industry the artist depicts a young girl, intent on her work, ignoring the attentions of the youth behind her, as well as the view beyond her. In Idleness, the subject is slightly more complex: the girl appears to be listening to the words being whispered to her, her dress is slipping off her shoulders and she has lost concentration on her task. However, above her head, the bird (traditionally a symbol for female virtue) remains in its cage. It was this careful balancing between innocence and hints of a fall from grace, which found such popularity with Wheatley's audience.

There is another version of Idleness, executed the year after the present watercolor and in a paler palette, (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven). The subject was engraved in 1787 and entitled The Rustic Lover.

The inscription, in the artist's hand, on the verso of these watercolors indicates that they were acquired directly from the artist in the 1780s by the eminent collector William Ralph Cartwright (1771-1847).