This 'study of a foot and ankle' was done by Louisa Herschel when she was 18 or 19 years old. While its possible that she or one of her sisters posed for this, it is more likely that the feet would have been a plaster model owned by their drawing tutor. Plaster casts of statues and parts of statues would have been the standard tools of such a tutor. It is signed by the artist and dated.

Louisa, as she was known to the family, was John and Margaret's 4th child and was considered by the rest of the family to be their most accomplished artist. 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 a very intensive education at home with lessons from their mother, their father, a series of governesses and a number of specialist outside tutors. While we do not have records for every year of their childhood, there does exist (in a private collection) Louisa's diary for the year 1844 and from this we can see that in 1844 those children still at home had lessons in drawing with an outside tutor, Mr de la Cours who came to the house every Monday and would continue to practice their artwork every other day.