The present work is a design for The Geneva Window (1929) (fig. 1), which Harry Clarke was commissioned to make as a gift from the Irish government for the International Labour Building of the League of Nations in Geneva. The window consists of eight panels illustrating the work of fifteen early twentieth-century Irish writers. Here, Clarke takes inspiration from J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World (fig. 2), the three-act play first performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1907, and which caused a public outcry at the time. Clarke's window itself proved too controversial owing to the writers and images Clarke chose for it - in 1930 the Irish government rejected it for fear of causing offence and thus the window was never installed as intended.

Harry Clarke died before a resolution was found for the window. It was subsequently installed in a government building in Merrion Street. After deterioration to some of the panels, and for fear of one of Clarke's greatest works being hidden away, the artist's wife Margaret took possession of the window. After her death in 1961, it was loaned to the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin from 1963-80. It was later consigned to storage prompting Clarke's sons to remove the work; it was exhibited by the Fine Art Society in London in 1988 and then purchased by the Wolfsonian Foundation in Miami, Florida.