Sims lost his eldest son in the First World War; this tragedy and his traumatic experiences as a War Artist began to unhinge his fragile mind. Despite phenomenal success (his portrait of Countess Rocksavage and her Son, exhibited at the Royal Academy at the same time as Sargent's, was voted Picture of the Year in 1923, eclipsing the more famous artist), his paintings became increasingly mystical and experimental as mania overtook him, until his suicide in 1928.

Sims had met Vivienne Jeudwine, the sitter here, in 1920, and made several studies of her and her son, who was the artist's illegitimate child. Our picture, which dates to the early '20s, used to be titled The Artist's Wife, which Vivienne never was. Indeed, her marriage to another man in 1928 contributed to Sims's decline.

Sims was Keeper of the RA Schools in the 1920s. He wrote an influential and popular book, Picture Making … mainly consisting of notes from his technical studio diary, published posthumously in 1934. In it he described his experiments with tempera:

… brush mark by brush mark … For broken colour, the tempera may be used like pastel, taking very little colour into a stiff brush and scrubbing it on. I prefer to cover the canvas as little as possible, treating the picture rather as a coloured drawing.