Rosa Simes was a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society for which she hosted fundraisers in Bridport near the family seat of Bridehead Manor, where this picture has hung until recently. As well as being a friend and one-time studio assistant to Burne-Jones, Clifford was Honorary Secretary of The Church Army, the evangelist wing of the Church of England working with the poor of London, and most probably met the sitter through his missionary work. In 1888 Clifford travelled to the island of Moloka'i in the Hawaiian Archipelago to visit the celebrated Father Damien who had established a leper colony there, and gave him a Burne-Jones watercolour of St Francis (now in the Met, NYC). This splendid Edwardian portrait is housed in a Foord and Dickinson frame.