Inscribed with a dedication to his wife, Anaïs Mélisande Frolin, but by reference to her nominal character in this composition, in a variant spelling. The plate is also referred to as ‘The London Caster Girl’. Anaïs was frequently used as a model to convey various archetypes or characteristics of femininity, deploying costumes, hairstyles and hats to this end, usually against more or less plain or very simple and distant backgrounds. Brockhurst (1890-1978) was raised Birmingham where he attended the Municipal School of Art from the age of 12, before progressing to the Royal Academy Schools in London, in 1907. He won a scholarship that allowed him to travel to France, where he met Anaïs, and then Italy, where he was hugely influenced by the Renaissance artists, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli and Leonardo. He became a notable portrait artist, and over the 1920s and ’30s fully developed his enormous talent as a printmaker.