Australian-born Lees was a close friend of Augustus John, both of whom studied at the Slade under Tonks. Lees went on to teach drawing there for over a decade, and it is to this period that the present picture dates. Lyndra was Lees' wife, whom he drew many times. In 1913 Lees married Edith Harriet Price (born 1890 Eastbourne), who by 1911 was earning a living as an artist's model in London, at which time she was residing in Fulham with her widowed mother, Emma Price-Pierce. Her father, John, had been a house painter. Edith was a popular model and she had known the Arenig painters for some time, Augustus John having drawn her in the nude in 1910.