Painted in the style of Frederick Appleyard. Initialed lower left, 'FR.A' and created circa 1925. Bearing signature, verso. An elegant and psychologically-penetrating pastel study of a fashionable young brunette with gray-green eyes, shown standing and gazing to the viewer's left. This notable British landscape and portrait artist attended Scarborough School of Art where he studied under the genre and landscape painter Albert Strange. He then proceeded to the National Art Training School at South Kensington and from there, on the recommendation of the artist John Sparkes, to the Royal Academy. At the Royal Academy, he was met with immediate success, first receiving the Turner Gold Medal, followed by the Creswick Prize and the Landseer Scholarship. Frederick Appleyard was a painter of landscapes, portraits and allegorical compositions of the decorative kind frequently associated with English Impressionism. Over the course of a long and storied career, he received a number of prestigious public commissions that included mural decorations for the Royal Academy of Art. He exhibited for many years at the Royal Academy (1900-1935), the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts. From 1918-1950, he was also a regular exhibitor at the Royal West of England Academy of which he was elected a full member in 1926. Appleyard's work is well-represented in private and public collections including in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery which holds 'A Secret', a Chantrey Bequest purchase from the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1915.