Three-quarter length, three-quarter right side portrait of a young woman in a heavy black dress, with fair hair pinned in braids across her head. She is seated in a cane backed chair at a small side table, with one elbow resting on the table, a book in one hand resting in her lap, and her head turned to face the viewer. She sits against a plain, pale background with drapes just visible to the left.

The sitter is known to have been a model. It is possible that she was Theodora Marguerite Anne Flewitt Bennett (1879–1970), who lived with her family in South Kensington not far from Steer’s home and studio, until she married in 1907. Theodora’s sister, Helen, who gave her profession as ‘Actress’ when she married in 1914, is another possibility.