An early painting by Tuke when he was just 20 years of age. The sitter is Mrs Thomas Dash (nee Mary Osler) who was about 75 years old. She was born one of nine children of Edward Osler of and Mary Osler (nee Paddy) of Falmouth. Mary married Thomas Dash in c.1838 and they had four children. Her husband was an oyster merchant. The great medical practitioner William Osler, Bart.M.D. F.R.S. was Mary’s nephew, the eighth child of her brother Featherstone Lake Osler and Ellen Free Pickton born in Canada July 12th 1849. In William Osler’s book on his life life mention is made of him studying Tuke’s fathers book. In Henry Scott Tuke’s diary (1924-5) reference is made to Tuke visiting the Osler family. Tukes father was in Falmouth in 1878 and clearly the two families must have got to know each other. Tuke painted Mrs Dash in 1878 the year before he started the Tuke Registers. He exhibited in the Polytechnic Exhibition in 1878 and 1879 perhaps this portrait.