Dunbar studied at Rochester and Chelsea Schools of Art and the Royal College. She finished her studies in 1933 and was commissioned to paint murals at Brockley School in Kent the same year. She was appointed an Official War Artist in 1940 and this work was made as a result. The artist stated that it was 'painted at Strood towards the end of the war, about 1944-5. It is an imaginative painting of a Land Girl's work with an outdoor dairy herd on the Hampshire Downs. The bail is the moveable shed where the milking is done'.