Bramley summered in Pont Aven, Brittany in 1881 and 1882 along with Edwin Harris, WA Breakespeare and Elizabeth Armstrong (later Forbes). 

Two years later Bramley arrived in Newlyn in the winter of 1884, the same year as Stanhope Forbes, in the first real influx of artists that followed Edwin Harris and Walter Langley who settled there in 1882. Like Forbes his principal subject matter was the human figure, but Bramley was more concerned with mood and character, the seeds of which we can see in Femme avec châle.

On the verso there is a signed artist’s label with his Lincoln address; "Frank Bramley – Fiskerton – Lincoln”. There is a further old French language label which copies the reference to Bramley from E Benezit’s Dictionnaire des Peintres Sculpteurs. First published by Éditions Gründ in Paris in 1911, the 8 volumes are an extensive dictionary and biographical reference of artists by Emmanuel Bénézit. The significance of this label is that it suggests the work spent some time in the early twentieth century in France. In 2007 Sothebys placed the painting in Bramley’s period in Pont Aven in Brittany,  describing the subject as a “young Breton woman”. The work was in their sale which featured a collection of works by Rosa, Auguste, and Juliette Bonheur, a family of acclaimed French artists active at the end of the nineteenth century. In sum these references give credence to the work deriving from Bramley’s time, a few years before Newlyn, in Pont Aven during the summers of 1881 and 1882 and to it likely having been sold and remained in France for some time.

The painting was acquired from Sothebys in 2007 by The Bowerman Charitable Trust which holds a remarkable collection of works by Newlyn artists and regularly lends to Penlee Gallery and Museum. Femme avec châle is a great example of Bramley's preference for indoor settings, where he could best study and transpose onto canvas the subtle effects of light and shade, and tonal harmonies in flesh and hair.