Walter Bertram Potter (1872-1918), known as Bertram, was the younger brother of the children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). As a child he shared his sister's passions for drawing and natural history and was joint custodian of a menagerie of exotic pets, including salamanders, bats, rabbits, mice, lizards and snails. It was Bertram who first encouraged Beatrix to publish some early rabbit drawings as greetings cards in 1890 and she continued to seek his advice when illustrating the Peter Rabbit books. Although overshadowed by the success of his sister, Bertram became an artist in his own right. He produced much larger scale oil paintings and etchings and exhibited work at the Royal Academy.

Bertram and Beatrix were frequent sitters for their father's photographs. Rupert Potter (1832-1914) took up photography in the 1860s when it was still a relatively new art form and was elected to the Photographic Society of London in 1869. An enthusiastic and skilled amateur, he later contributed to photographic exhibitions. It was his delight to photograph his family during the long summer holidays to Scotland and the Lake District. Photography was an expensive and laborious process yet both children appear to have endured patiently the elaborate choreography and the camera’s uncomfortably long exposure. Rupert's prolific legacy of several hundred photographs forms a broad pictorial account of the children's lives from infancy to adulthood. This highly choreographed photograph depicts Bertram in the garden of Dalguise House, near Dunkeld, Perthshire, the Potter's summer retreat from 1871 to 1881.