Edith Somerville is better known as a writer then a painter. Under the pseudonym of Somerville and Ross, she and her cousin in Violet Martin collaborated on novels such as The Real Charlotte, and their much-loved, comical stories of Irish country life, Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. However, Edith began her career as an art student, and became an illustrator and painter of note.

She was born in Corfu in 1858, but her childhood was spent at Drishane House, Castletownshend, in West Cork. She started writing and drawing charicatures at an early age, and went on to study art in London, Dusseldorf, and in Paris, where she began her career as an illustrator. After returning home, she met her cousin Violet in 1886, and the two became life-long friends, beginning their fruitful partnership as writers. The two made regular visits to the Continent. In the twentieth century, Edith spent more time at oil painting, having one-person exhibitions in London, and on two occasions in New York in 1929, in which year she made her first visit to America. A third exhibition was held in New York in 1938.

Both The Goose Girl (1888) and its companion painting Retrospect (1887) [private collection] show Edith's absorption of French Peasant Realism, and could easily be Salon paintings of the 1880s. Although coming from a privileged background herself, Edith had an interest in and sympathy for the lives of the villagers and country people of West Cork. The child, with her dark eyes and hair and her ragged barefoot attire, resembles the Italian models who were favoured by French artists in this period. In fact, it is a local girl, Mary Ann, who poses for the artist, and Edith acquired the white goose for three shillings. With its superb still-life detail, gleaming copper vessels, cabbage and string of onions, The Goose Girl is one of Edith Somerville's finest early paintings.