This Wedgwood plate was decorated by Thérèse Lessore who became the third wife of the artist Walter Sickert in 1926. Despite her French name, she was born in Brighton and studied art at London's Slade School. She painted landscapes, interiors, and circus scenes, as well as producing designs for textiles. She was part of the Bloomsbury set as was her first husband, the painter Bernard Adeney, and Walter Sickert who wrote of her art in 1914: 'Her pictures are seemingly not painted from models pretending to do certain things. By some strange alchemy of genius, the essentials of their being and movement are torn from them, and presented in ordered and rhythmical arrangement of the highest technical brevity and beauty.'

Thérèse Lessore's interest in painting for pottery design was not surprising since her grandfather was Emile Lessore, a free-hand decorator for Wedgwood Potteries, and her father was the artist Jules Lessore, who also painted pottery. This design was probably produced in the 1930s when circus was enjoying great popularity due to Bertram Mills' grand annual circuses at Olympia.