Ethleen Palmer emigrated to Australia from Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1921, and studied at the East Sydney Technical College from 1924 to 1927. She subsequently endured four years of illness, learning the linocut technique while recuperating. Her mother had visited Japan and owned a collection of Japanese woodblock prints, the influence of which is apparent in Palmer’s stylised, fluid forms and subtle gradations in colour. While the artist herself resisted the connection, it was not lost on contemporary critics, one of whom dubbed her ‘an Australian Hokusai’.  

In 1938, Palmer’s Egrets won its division in Sydney’s 150th Anniversary Art Competition. The Queensland Art Gallery acquired the print from that exhibition. By the following year, she was represented in all major state gallery collections, and her work had been reproduced in the influential magazine Art in Australia. In the late 1940s, Palmer became one of the first artists in Sydney to experiment with screenprinting, and she produced prints, fabrics and a range of domestic items.