The theme of death recurs in Bellany’s paintings of the 1960s-70s, and it forms the background to this painting of his maternal grandmother, Mrs Maltman, who had been recently widowed. Depicted sitting up in bed with the Bible open before her and confronting the viewer with an intense gaze, she is dignified and serene - in every sense the matriarch of the family. Bellany was very close to his family and represented various members of it in paintings and drawings since childhood. He used variations of this image in a series of paintings in the period 1969-72.