William Beckwith (WB) McInnes studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall. He travelled, studied and painted for some years in Europe from 1912 and then returned to Melbourne where he taught at the National Gallery School. In the 1930s he did a stint as acting Director of the National Gallery of Victoria and when Bernard Hall died in 1934 he became head of the Gallery school. Between 1921 and 1936 McInnes won the Archibald Prize seven times. In 1927 he was commissioned by the Australian Government to depict the first opening of Parliament in Canberra by the Duke of York.