Ellen Terry made her first success as Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in the Bancrofts' production at London's Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1876. After she played it again, with Henry Irving's company at the Lyceum Theatre in 1879, it became one of her most famous roles. As the American critic William Winter wrote: 'Ellen Terry embodied Portia... the essential womanliness of that character was for the first time in the modern theatre adequately interpreted and portrayed'. This portrait was probably painted after Ellen Terry took the role in an all-star production at Drury Lane Theatre, 14 July 1903, with Henry Irving as Shylock.

The artist Pamela Colman-Smith was born in London to the American merchant, Charles Edward Smith, and his Jamaican wife, Corinne. Her father's job meant frequent trips abroad and, after the death of her mother when she was ten, she joined the Lyceum Theatre out of a desire for company. Her experience of touring theatre was to influence her later work. She studied art in Brooklyn from 1893 until 1899 but returned to England in 1899 where she became a designer and illustrator, most notably of the Rider-Waite-Smith pack of tarot cards and of theatrical subjects.