Dod Procter, born Doris Margaret Shaw, RA (1890–1972) was a famous early twentieth-century English artist, best known for Impressionistic landscapes and delicate "nearly sculptural studies of solitary female subjects."

[7][8] In Newlyn, Dod met Laura Knight, who became a lifelong friend and a considerable influence on her career.

Dod and Ernest were both influenced by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and the artists that they met in France, such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne.

[2] In 1920 Dod and Ernest Procter were commissioned to decorate the Kokine Palace in Rangoon by a Chinese millionaire, Ching Tsong.

[4][5] The commission took a year and required them working with Burmese, Indian and Chinese craftsmen often painting murals at considerable heights within the palace.

[6] However Ching Tsong was unimpressed with their work and refused to pay them their agreed fees or provide accommodation so the Procters painted portraits of local people and members of the British colonial administration for an income.

[6] Throughout the 1920s Dod Procter continued to paint single female figures, sometimes nude, others in softly draped clothes.

[6] The Model, a portrait of a young women deep in concentration, was regarded as one of the best paintings shown at the Royal Academy in 1925.

[2][13] When Morning was displayed at the 1927 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, it was voted Picture of the Year and bought by the Daily Mail for the Tate Gallery, where it now hangs.

[15] Both public and critics responded to Morning, praising its "sensuous but sombre style" which evoked the west Cornish "silver light".

[16] Frank Rutter, art critic of The Sunday Times, said in 1927 that Morning was "a new vision of the human figure which amounts to the invention of a twentieth century style in portraiture"[17] and "She has achieved apparently with consummate ease that complete presentation of twentieth century vision in terms of plastic design after which Derain and other much praised French painters have been groping for years past.

"[18] Despite this, a number of the nude paintings by Procter that accompanied Morning on tour were deemed unsuitable for display by some venues.

Virginal showed a young female nude holding a dove and when the Academy rejected the painting the story was reported in the several national newspapers.