This soft, atmospheric nude was painted by Joseph R. DeCamp, one of the original members of "The Ten," a loosely-knit group of ten artists who resigned from the Society of American Artists to mount more intimate annual exhibitions for themselves. The model's modest pose and the poetic expression of her gesture reflects the organic forms and fluid shapes of the Art Nouveau aesthetic, a popular artistic trend of the time. DeCamp's best-known paintings of the 1890s are lyrical renditions of the nude such as this. They were shown at the first and second exhibitions of the Ten, and this piece in particular seems to have been the hit of the show. It had already won the Temple Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1899 and was shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. DeCamp called the painting "the most complete and most representative of my works."