Rowe said she drew a little here and there before her employers, the Smiths, were both deceased, and this work dates from that early period. The sorrowful blue figure at the picture’s center and his plea for mercy may be a tribute to her father, who passed away in 1945. Her second husband, Henry Rowe, died the following year and suffered from what may have been a form of dementia, so the work could also be an empathetic message for him.