Flora Rankin, Irene MacDonald, and Mary Josephine MacDonald at Elm Lodge

Irene and Mary MacDonald were two of the five children of Scottish novelist and poet George MacDonald. Carroll was a friend of the family, and the children affectionately called him "Uncle." It was the MacDonalds to whom he read the manuscript of The Adventures of Alice and who urged him to publish the work. Carroll photographed the family on several occasions. This photograph, which includes the children's friend Flo Rankin standing in the middle, was produced during the photographer's stay at Elm Lodge in Hampstead the week of July 25, 1863.

When not disguising his sitters, Carroll preferred to photograph them posing naturally in everyday attire. Perhaps the elaborate dress Flo was wearing on her visit prompted Carroll to create this unusual set piece, which alludes to the figure of Flora in Botticelli's Spring and to the mythologizing work of his Pre-Raphaelite painter friends Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Hughes. Young girls arrayed in wildflowers signified the purity and innocence of childhood, a concept dear to the Victorians. The lens, however, has unwittingly denounced the conceit of such an unsullied universe. The figure of Flo Rankin may be adorned as a child, but it is a young woman sure of her appeal who locks gazes with the viewer, on her lips the ironic flutter of a smile.