Samuel Colman (1832-1920) was an English painter, based in Bristol for most of his career. In about 1815 Colman moved from Yeovil to Bristol, where he lived until around 1840. He worked as a portrait painter and drawing-master in the city, as well as painting minutely detailed Romantic, Biblical and genre scenes. He was loosely associated with the grouping of artists known as the Bristol School which flourished from the Regency era onwards.

Zion Chapel was a Congregationalist chapel in Bedminster and the building was new when Samuel Colman painted it. The artist and his wife were regular worshippers there. He contrasts the devout families approaching the church with the poor woman and children begging on the pavement. Although they are given alms, the man points to the church as if to say piety could lessen their misery. The New Gaol, on the extreme right, had been destroyed in the Bristol Riots of October 1831 but the artist still included it.