This half length portrait shows the sitter in academic robes holding a book and is signed and inscribed 'Oxford 1932'. Sir William Searle Holdsworth was a noted legal historian and a Professor of English Law at Oxford University. The Holdsworth Club, which is the Birmingham University Law Schools student Law Club, was founded in 1927 and was named after and patronised by Sir William. The painter, Nestor Cambier, was a Belgian painter who lived both in the United States and Great Britain having finished his studies at the Brussels Academy in 1900. This particular painting was commissioned by Lady Barber.