Earles, a London-born miniaturist, portrait and genre painter exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists between 1842 and 1863. He emigrated to Victoria in early 1864 and was active in Australia into the early 1890s, exhibiting portraits and sentimental genre subjects. He showed little interest in Australian themes and his finely painted portraits and narrative subjects distinguish him as one of the very 'few painters working in Australia who painted figure subjects almost exclusively'. (C. Bruce in J. Kerr (ed.), The Dictionary of Australian Artists: painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870, Melbourne 1992, p. 237)