This is one of several wax figurines executed by Agatha Walker in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly of actors and actresses in character in successful London productions. The 19th century saw a craze for ceramic figurines of performers. Agatha Walker attempted to revive this tradition with her limited edition sculptures, modelled from life in plaster and coated with a fine wax layer which was then coloured. In 1931 Agatha Walker's figures were exhibited at the Fine Art Society.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (1891-1992) had an extraordinarily long stage career. She is represented here as Elizabeth Barrett in Rudolph Besier's play The Barretts of Wimpole Street which originally opened at the Malvern Festival Theatre in August 1930 and transferred to London's Queen's Theatre in September. Gwen Ffrangcon-Davis made her stage début as a fairy in a 1911 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and sang the soprano lead in The Immortal Hour and The Birth of Arthur, at the Glastonbury festival (1919–20) and at the Old Vic. She joined the Birmingham Repertory Company in 1921, and won critical acclaim for her roles in J. M. Barrie's Quality Street (1921) and The Admirable Crichton (1922). She made her name in London in 1923, creating the roles of Eve and the Newly Born in the first production of Shaw's Back to Methuselah. In 1924 she played Juliet to John Gielgud's Romeo, starting a stage partnership that lasted for almost half a century.