Born in Thetford (Norfolk), she was the daughter of Robert George Burrell, a manufacturer of steam engines, and Ellen Alborough Cockayne.
Among those whose portraits she painted were actresses Gladys Cooper, Marie Löhr, Muriel Beaumont and Irene Vanbrugh,[3] and society individuals, such as Miriam Rothschild as a young girl[4][5] and Lady Marjorie Duff.
[12][13] Reviewers noted that her style had "grace and simplicity";[14] despite the "over-prettiness" of her works, it evolved to "a happy knack of catching likenesses" and a "gift of depicting life-like expression".
During a sitting,[15] she met Major Boyd Alexander Cuninghame (born in Australia in 1871); who had fought in the Boer War and, during WWI, against the Germans in Rhodesia, in December 1914 and in 1915.
The well-known artist who is shortly to be married to Major Boyd Cuninghame (late Scots Greys), who has been serving with the Northern Rhodesia Rifles".