This portrait was painted five years after Matilda Talbot presented Lacock to the National Trust. She had inherited the property on her uncle's death in 1916. Matilda Talbot was fascinated by the history of Lacock and in 1932 she held a pageant to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the foundation of the Abbey; she posed as Ela, the Countess of Salisbury. During the Second World War Maltilda had 85 evacuee children living and learning in Lacock. She never married, devoting herself to the house. In her memoirs she expressed the hope that Lacock might 'adapt itself to all the changes through which we are living, so as to preserve the spirit sympathetically enough to reach and touch contemporary thought'. Lord Methuen studied under Walter Sickert and was a Trustee of the National Gallery and the Tate.