Oil painting. The unglamorous but industrious little ships of London's tug fleet were the workhorses of the Thames. They provided a vital service, towing and manoeuvring vessels in all circumstances as well as being the motive power for trains of dumb barges laden with goods and other materialsd up and down the river. 'Agama' was a single-screw motor tug built by Alexander Hall & Co Ltd at Aberdeen (Yard No. 659) for Gaselee & Son Ltd, tug owners of London (who also published a well-known wharf directory). It was launched on 12 February 1937 and spent its entire life on the Thames until sold in 1970 and broken up at Bloors Wharf, Rainham, Kent.

Anne Christopherson (nee Watson) was born in India in 1921, with an artistic family background. Her training at Bournemouth and Hornsey schools of art was delayed until after the Second World War and she then taught for 11 years at Blackheath Girls High School. In 1958 she married the painter John Christopherson (d.1996) and most of their subsequent life was Greenwich, that area and the Thames being her principal subject. They also painted in Cornwall, where she moved into residential care for her last years owing to health reasons. Without children of her own, in 2011 she founded an internship for the study of prints and drawings at the British Museum, which perpetuates her memory.