Tinsel prints were created from etched portraits of theatrical stars in popular roles they played on the London stage. They were hand-painted in watercolour and decorated with scraps of material and tinsel additions. They were popular during the first half of the 19th century and were considered an adult, rather than a child's hobby. By the 1830s it was possible to buy the tinsel, leather and feather ornaments to go with each image.

This depicts Edward William Elton (1794-1843) as Rolla in the melodrama Pizarro, a role he played in Macready's company at Drury Lane in the 1839 season. Adapted by Richard Brinsley Sheridan from the play The Spaniard in Peru by the German Augustus von Kotzebue, and first staged at London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1799. the plot concerned the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro waging a war of conquest against the Inca Empire of Peru. The play caught the imagination of Georgian audiences, who particularly appreciated the exotic sets and costumes, and the heroic Inca, Rolla, who dies protecting the infant son of the Spaniard Alonzo and his Inca wife. Elton himself died tragically on 18th July 1843 when the ship Pegasus sunk off Holy Island when Elton was returning from an engagement at William Murray's Edinburgh Theatre.