A head-and-shoulders portrait of a young, dark-haired woman, seen in three quarter face view with her head turned to the left. Her hair is pinned back revealing a drop pearl earring and she wears a blue-grey dress and an ochre-coloured shawl, the end of which she holds between her hands. The same colouring is reflected in the background. The pose, clothing and composition strongly reflect the artist's admiration for Rembrandt. Although the contemplative nature of the pose is also similar to that in her painting 'Young Woman Sewing' (Private Collection), the paint handling and palette are very different. In this portrait the swiftly executed, vertical brushstrokes building paint and colour in layers, with paint more densely applied to the face and more sketchily applied elsewhere, can be compared to the technique in other contemporaneous paintings such as 'Orthodox Jew, Whitechapel' (Private Collection). The number '41' affixed to the paper (lower left) is likely to relate to an as yet untraced exhibition.