Ascott House was the historic rural retreat of the de Rothschild family. The extensive manicured gardens were laid out on the advice of the garden designer Sir Harry Veitch around 1902 by Leopold de Rothschild, a British banker and breeder of racehorses, as a wedding present to his wife. In the centre of the Dutch flower garden, so named for its formal beds of tulips, stands a fountain by the American sculptor Thomas Waldo Story (1854-1915) of Cupid surrounded by dolphins. Story is also known for his Fountain of Love in the grounds of Cliveden, home of the Viscounts Astor. Munnings painted portraits of the horses belonging to Anthony de Rothschild, the youngest son of Leopold who inherited Ascott House on his father's death in 1917, at his Southcourt Stud in the early 1920s. Munnings also wrote about this period in the second volume of his autobiography, The Second Burst, 'I lived for some months in comfort in his house, at Ascott Wing. [...] During those weeks of work at the Southcourt Stud I did many pictures, which were kept with my painting things in one of the large stallion-boxes'.