This charcoal sketch depicts friends of Dame Laura Knight celebrating Christmas in 1932 at the couple's Compton Park estate. They are George Cross, an estate agent and property developer, and his mistress, Blanche Gertrude Ealand, known as 'Heather'. Knight exhibited a portrait of Ealand, a striking woman holding the barrel of a gun with eyes locked on the viewer, at the Royal Academy in 1928. Graphic described the picture on 12 May 1928: ‘Mrs Laura Knight’s picture, “Miss Ealand”, the most notable of her six contributions to the 1928 Exhibition at Burlington House, might stand for a study of the typical finely finished English girl of today, with her short hair, passion for sport, and clear-cut self-reliance’. The Daily Mirror similarly recognised Ealand as a glamorous woman who typified the age, writing on 5 May 1928: ‘Miss 1928 would be a fitting title for this portrait, “Miss Ealand”, the work of Mrs Laura Knight, A.R.A.’.