Colonel Herbert Harrington Roberts was a friend of Sandys, and other artists including Seymour Lucas, John Watson Nicol, and the Copes. He wrote an autobiography in 1920 entitled Memories of four-score years, which was published privatedly by Bodley Head. This does not make it entirely clear when the two first met, but it seems that Sandys' father encouraged Roberts' education at the Norwich School of Design. Roberts went on to Cary's School of Art in Bloomsbury, before being accepted to the Royal Academy Schools, in the same year as Frederick Walker (1840-1875), and William Blake Richmond (1842-1921). However, he moved away from an artistic career and obtained a commission in the 1st Warwickshire Militia. He lived for a time as a young man at Thorpe, near Norwich, and it was here that he met Frederick Sandys, to whom he lent the studio he had built at the house. They seem to have become friends, and Roberts to have owned several works by Sandys.