William Powell Frith, R.A. (1819-1909)

The painting includes a self-portrait of the artist, and relates an incident described in the fragmentary letter, in which Frith, on a trip to Naples was stopped by a flower girl who spoke to him in Italian. When he didn't understand, she took his lapel and put a flower in it. This is a smaller version of a work exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1877, (no.316), now in the Hospital Field House Collection, Arbroath, Scotland.