This cluttered painting shows the haloed Virgin wearing a blue robe and seated on a bench before a hedge of roses. The Christ Child, also with a halo, is on her knee. Behind them are the heads of 11 attendant angels, all with feathered golden wings. The decorative use of gold leaf recalls early Italian primitive religious paintings and makes the image seem quite (intentionally) two-dimensional. Strudwick was an unsuccesssful pupil of the Royal Academy but became an assistant, first to Spencer Stanhope and then to Burne-Jones (in the 1870s), whose style he emulated. He famously told George Bernard Shaw that he could not draw. This was a hindrance which Shaw regarded as a gift, saving him from empty virtuosity. Strudwick exhibited at the New Gallery and had two Liverpool shipping magnates as patrons, George Holt (1825–1896) and William Imrie (1836–1906), the latter of whom once owned this painting.