'Kneeling Woman' was commissioned from McWilliam by the surrealist artist and collector Roland Penrose. The 'piercing' of the sculpture is similar to the work of Hepworth and Moore, yet McWilliam has retained a strong naturalistic element. The omission of the torso from his sculptures was a device developed by McWilliam throughout his career. In this, and other works featuring fragments of the body, there is a play between solid and space, and the viewer is invited to reconstruct the whole from its parts.