John Downton was a Cambridge-educated, Slade-trained artist and philosopher whose work was a rejection of the modern world and a return to the art of the early Renaissance. This painting shows a very believable likeness of Nora Russell, the ten-year old daughter of a friend of Downton. Although Nora is depicted in her school uniform of hat, tie and pinafore, she is painted in the manner of Italian Renaissance masters and using a tempera technique. Downton was a Christian pacifist, who was a conscientious objector during the Second World War. He traveled extensively in Europe and adopted the ethos of artist/craftsman in the tradition of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. (https://artuk.org/discover/stories/exhibition-in-focus-meeting-modernism-20th-century-art-in-the-russell-cotes-collection)