Elna Borch was a private student of the sculptor August Saabye in 1889–91, and he also became her teacher when she started at the Art Academy's Art School for Women in 1891, and she is thus schooled in Saaby's naturalistic style, as seen in her early portrait busts from her debut at Charlottenborg in 1891. In the early 1900s, she traveled abroad on several study stays - first in 1901 to Paris and then several stays in Florence and Carrera. Here she became very preoccupied with symbolism and became one of the few Danish sculptors within this style, as is evident in the present sculpture. Brewer Carl Jacobsen bought several of her works, and she was the first female sculptor to be represented at the Glyptoteket.