This sketch of a demure woman with a book was made by Matilda Rose probably as a child. Rose, as she was known to the family, was John and Margaret's 10th child. She spent much of her adult life in India looking after her brothers William and John and later marrying a friend of her brother's William Waterfield.

This is one of a series of drawings she, alongside her brothers and sisters, would have done as part of her artistic education. The Herschel daughters, and the sons before they went away to school, recieved an intensive education at home with lessons from their mother, father, a series of governesses and a number of specialist external tutors.

The woman represented may have been a sister, or have been a plaster model of a statue or a painting owned by their drawing tutor. Paintings, plaster casts of statues and parts of statues would have been the standard tools of such a tutor.