The actress Mrs Patrick Campbell (born Stella Tanner) was a star of the London stage, appearing regularly in the 1890s as Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Juliet, and later as Eliza Doolittle. Her friend Walford Graham Robertson, an artist and playwright, described her as 'almost painfully thin, with great eyes and slow haunting utterance; she was not exactly beautiful, but intensely interesting and arresting […] Painters of course seized upon Mrs Campbell as a most inspiring subject; even Burne-Jones, who hated drawing from other than professional models, did several studies of her' (Time Was, p 248).

In April of 1898, the New Gallery had on display three different portraits of Campbell: one a painting by C E Halle, another a bust by Maud Coffin, and the third this drawing by Violet Manners. A print of it was published the following year amongst a portfolio of 51 portraits by Manners. 

She was the mistress of the witty quip, for example, ‘I do not really care what people do as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses’. She referred to wedlock as ‘the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue.’