Roberts’ portrait of the painter and etcher Louis Abrahams (1852–1903) was made in his Collins Street East studio. It shows some of the sitter’s plein air sketches behind him. Born in London, Abrahams and his family arrived in Australia in 1860. He studied at the National Gallery School becoming a friend of fellow students Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. He worked with those artists at Box Hill, Mentone and Heidelberg. Abrahams’ family were importers of cigars and it was Louis who supplied the cigar-box lid panels that were used for many of the ‘9 by 5 Impressions’. Abrahams was known to his close friends and colleagues as ‘Don’.