This painting is closely related to a (reversed) drawing dated 1924 and is of Brockhurst’s first wife Anaïs Folin. Brockhurst made an etching of this subject in 1929. Both the etching and the drawing were titled Malvina, his nickname for Anaïs which means, in Scottish folklore, ‘smooth brow.’ Brockhurst's marriage had come under strain in 1922 when Anaïs discovered his adultery with her sister, Marguerite, whom Brockhurst also painted at about the same time on a slightly smaller panel, also showing the wood grain. The use of lead white and black gives a strange marmoreal quality to the image, especially against the warmth of the wood. Brockhurst’s ‘blocked in’ technique adds a mask-like effect, which is certainly deliberate since both the drawing and the published etching also have it. It is possible that Brockhurst had meant to continue with the picture, but stopped in order to retain the startlingly modern appearance of the picture.

Born in Birmingham the son of a coal merchant, Brockhurst soon showed precocious drawing skills and entered the Birmingham School of Art at the age of twelve. A pupil at the Royal Academy Schools in 1907, he won the gold medal and a travelling scholarship in 1913, enabling him to visit both France and Italy. This led to a closer study of such 15th-century artists as Piero della Francesca, Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, whose work had an abiding influence on him. By 1937 he could command a price of £1000 for a portrait commission, and in 1940 he moved to New York where he became a rich and successful society portraitist.