Described as the ‘the Edwardian phenomenon of the new woman,’ by her friend by Robin Ody, and often engaging with radical politics through her art, Jessica Dismorr was a member of most all of the avant-garde groups active in London between 1912 and her death. After the Vorticist movement, which was led by her close friend Wyndham Lewis, ended at the start of the First World War Dismorr turned away from bold abstraction towards portraiture and landscape painting. In the early 1920s, while she was recovering from a nervous breakdown, Dismorr travelled and worked throughout Europe, including in Paris, London and her family home in Kent. This output was exhibited at her first solo show, in London in 1925, where the focus on landscape felt a far cry from her pre-war sensibilities. It was around this time that Dismorr also exhibited twenty-six figurative paintings with the London Group and held a representational exhibition with fellow Seven and Five member Winifred Nicholson. However, as the decade came to a close and the threats of war and fascism rose in Europe, Dismorr ended her more bucolic period with a return to abstraction.