Samuel Rahamin Samuel's portrait of Rosalind Adler, the younger daughter of the Rev. Michael Adler, was executed in 1906, and was almost certainly a commission. Little is known of Rosalind, except that she attended the Central Synagogue and assisted her mother and sister, Lilian, to decorate the Succah (temporary hut to celebrate the weeklong Festival of Sukkot) in 1907 and 1908. It was painted towards the end of Samuel's years in London (1903-07) when he studied, firstly, at the Slade School of Fine Art, and then, at the Royal Academy School, under John S. Sargent and Solomon J. Solomon - the latter, in 1906, became only the second Jewish Royal Academician, President of the Royal Society of British Artists and an extremely influential figure in Jewish circles. Their influence can be seen in the naturalism and loose brushwork apparent in this classic Edwardian portrait of a young girl, dressed in white (traditionally denoting purity), set within a refined interior, and clearly belonging to the Western tradition. Samuel exhibited it in a joint exhibition with J. H. Amshewitz at the latter's London studio in April 1906, where it was admired, within a longer appreciation of Samuel's work, by the critic of the Jewish Chronicle as 'a charming example of child-portraiture' (Jewish Chronicle, 06 April 1906).

By 1908 Samuel had returned to India and abandoned naturalism in favour of the two-dimensional figuration traditionally associated with Rajput painting, a strand of the Bengal school, creating critically acclaimed paintings in this latter style under the name Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin, which he adopted after converting to Islam prior to his marriage in 1912.

The exact provenance of this rare early work, made under his given name, is untraced but it is likely to have been with the Adler family prior to entering the collection, where it was logged in the Ben Uri Art Society Permanent Collection catalogue in 1960.