In 1973, William Turnbull was given a major retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London. The exhibition, which included an in-depth catalogue essay by curator Richard Morphet, required that Turnbull engage in an extensive reappraisal of his past and recent work. This mid-career survey almost inevitably left Turnbull looking for a new place to begin and for much of the 1970s, while he continued to paint, he devoted more time to drawing and made small-scale sculptures in clay. 

In 1970, Turnbull had made an extensive group of screenprints to illustrate the 10th century Moorish poem The Garden of Caresses and this project sparked a renewed interest in both figure drawing and printmaking. Turnbull's subsequent works on paper from the 1970s have a formal directness and pleasing sensuality, qualities later present in the new cycle of sculptures which emerged at the end of the decade.