Spencer made this study of Mrs Perren in her wedding hat on a visit to Switzerland in the 1930s . His patron Sir Edward Beddington-Behrens recorded that Spencer drew the local women going to church in their intricately embroidered native dress. Patricia Preece, who accompanied him, also remembered Spencer producing portrait drawings of women: in the head-dresses covered in patterns of gold thread worn at christenings. The hotel proprietor arranged a number of such sittings. Similar head-dresses appear in the large triptych ‘Souvenir of Switzerland’, 1934 (National Museums & Galleries of Wales, Cardiff), which distilled Spencer’s memories of Saas-Fee, and recur in ‘Avalanche, Switzerland’, 1935-6 (private collection).