1940 was an important year for Frances Hodgkins: she was invited to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale with four other British artists and she held an extremely successful exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery. Writing of the former, where this lot was one of the exhibits, to her brother, she thought it 'a very considerable compliment to your sister, one is assumed to be either eminent or dead - perhaps a bit of both - before you can qualify for this honour. It is a very important exhibition'
(See E.H. McCormick, The Expatriate a Study of Frances Hodgkins and New Zealand, Wellington, 1954, p.232)