Chalmers’s painting shows a scene from Sir Walter Scott’s novel ‘The Pirate’. The old seer Ulla Troil (also known as Norna) speaks to a group of children. Among them are the young Minna and Brenda, who both grow up into beautiful ladies and fall in love with two of the main characters. Chalmers began this painting about 1864, and the head of Ulla Troil may belong to this period of work. However, the picture was subjected to successive revisions, including a fairly drastic scraping out and repainting of the group of children and the artist seems to have been attempting to incorporate more colour and atmosphere into the shadows. At his death it still remained unfinished.