Born in Clarkston, in Glasgow in 1892, William Douglas Macleod worked in a bank and served in the First World War, enrolling at the Glasgow School of Art after the cessation of hostilities. On graduation in 1923, he began painting Scottish and European landscapes as well as producing many fine etchings in Spain and North Africa, of which this present one is a good example. Between 1920 and 1930 he worked as a cartoonist for the Glasgow Evening News and produced a number of floral still-lives in pastel.