The present work is one of eight located paintings from the artist's early series of portraits 'The Girl in Blue'. The sitter is the artist's favourite model, an unnamed girl who was her neighbour at 29 Rue Terre Neuve in Meudon from 1911. The girl began to pose around 1914 until the mid 1920s. She has become known as 'the Convalescent' after the later series of portraits which depict her seated in a chair, reading a book or a letter, or stroking a cat.

The paintings of the girl in blue change very subtly in detail; in seven of them the girl's dress is spotted but the present work is the only one to have a feature in the background. This is possibly a curtain which the artist mentions adding in a letter to John Quinn (dated 15 July 1924).
(see C. Langdale, loc. cit.).