Born in England, Elizabeth Rivers studied at Goldsmiths College, London, before winning a scholarship in 1926 to the Royal Academy schools, where she continued her studies under Walter Sickert. In 1931 she moved to Paris and enrolled in the art school run by André Lhôte in Paris. The following year Rivers was part of the progressive ‘Twenties Group´, showing at the Wertheim Gallery in London. In the latter half of the 1930´s Rivers moved to Ireland and lived on the Aran Islands. She exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, while her book Stranger in Aran was published in 1946. Six years later, the Waddington Galleries published a portfolio of her wood engravings of life on the Aran Islands. During and after the war Rivers lived in London, exhibiting at the New English Art Club and the Royal Academy. Returning to Ireland, she assisted Evie Hone with designs for stained-glass windows and in the 1950s she exhibited wood carvings, wood engravings, and paintings.

Proposal, painted around 1960, is a more complex work, again in a quasi-abstract style, depicting a man and a woman standing beneath a tree, with a house in the background. The composition is reminiscent of a stage setting, a blending of the conventions of Victorian narrative painting with the 20th century Cubist style of Andre Lhote and the School of Paris.

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