In her reminiscences Violet Trefusis describes their new house at Auteuil, which they moved into in 1923, 'We hastened to furnish the house, regardless of nationality or period. There were Chinese rugs with geometrical patterns, Venetian mirrors full of reminscences and plots, glass pictures, one of which was given me by my mother. It represented a Chinese lady smiling at a small grey parrot perched on her arm. She attempts nothing to detain it. Its cage is in her eyes.'
Chinese mirror paintings of European figures were normally copied from printed sources exported from Holland, England and especially France (see M. Jourdain and R. Soame Jenyns, Chinese Export Art in the Eighteenth Century, 1967, rev. edn., pp.33-39)