The sitter is the artist’s sister-in-law, Gabriele Tergit, the pen name of Dr Elise Reifenberg (1894–1982), a pioneering female court reporter in Berlin, who achieved overnight fame for her socially critical novel about the late Weimar Republic, 'Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm' (1931); she married architect Heinz Reifenberg in 1928, the year that this portrait was probably painted. Following Hitler's accession to the German Chancellorship, the couple was forced to flee in 1933, initially via Czechoslovakia to Palestine, later settling in London in 1938. After migration, Tergit became secretary of the London PEN-Center of German-language Authors Abroad and Heinz Reifenberg's commissions included Belsize Square Synagogue.

The portrait is difficult to date precisely but the style of Tergit's dress and hair are commensurate with photographs around the time of her marriage. A feint line bisecting the centre of the canvas implies that the portrait may have been folded unframed at some point, possibly travelling in the artist's belongings as a family memento when she fled to England with her artist husband, Julius Rosenbaum, in 1939, perhaps unsure until their arrival that the two couples would be reconciled.