University of Virginia Library

The poem's close attention to natural detail marks it as quintessentially Pre-Raphaelite. John Lucas Tupper was so devoted to the idea of absolute fidelity to nature that he considered it an insult if asked to highlight a particular aspect of a drawing in his job as an anatomical draghtsman.

"A Sketch from Nature" was most likely written specifically for The Germ. William Michael Rossetti admired these "very spirited lines," yet omitted them from his posthumous collection of Tupper's poems because they had already been published.