This 'study of a foot with toes bent' was done by Matilda Rose Herschel. 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 igned by artist.

Rose, as she was known to the family, was John and Margaret's 10th child. 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, received a very intensive education at home with lessons from their mother, their father, a series of governesses and a number of specialist outside tutors. Rose 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.