Weinman designed these figures on a monumental scale as the crowning elements of a pair of fountains for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915 to celebrate the Panama Canal's completion. The exposition's official publication described Descending Night as “a gorgeous woman's figure just alighting, the brooding face and folding wings more than suggestive of dusk and starlight,” and the companion Rising Sun as “a joyous youth a-tiptoe, ready to commence his morning flight.” Weinman readily found a market for smaller versions of the frankly sensuous figures, like this pair.