David Wilkie Wynfield, the great-nephew of Sir David Wilkie, was a painter and member of the St. John's Wood Clique. An amateur photographer, he made a series of portraits of fellow artists, favouring a slightly blurred technique which was to influence his friend Julia Margaret Cameron to whom he is known to have given lessons.

This group of portraits represents many of the leading British artists of the Victorian period. Portraits with signatures are as follows: John Dawson Watson, John Everett Millais, Philip H. Calderon, William Gale, Richard C. Ansdell, Valentine Cameron Prinsep, Charles S. Keene, John Phillip, Thomas Faed, William Holman Hunt, John Evan Hodgson, Myles Birket Foster, William Frederick Yeames, Henry W. Philips and Frederick Walker. Others include a self-portrait and studies of Faed, Yeames and Frederick Richard Pickersgill.