Typically "Nabi" in its clustered mottled forms, close color values and thick, subtle harmonies, this is nonetheless an atypical work of the period if for no other reason than that Vuillard renders an attractive face clearly, head-on. This may lead us to suppose the sitter is not a family member, whose faces are usually presented obliquely, in shadows or with exaggerated, almost grotesque features (see lot 9). Stuart Preston in his major Vuillard monograph, posed the question:
One would like to know more about this attractive dusky lady
who sits stiffly yet seductively, wrapped in a loose scarlet
dressing gown edged with marabou. There is something saucy,
too, in the warm redness of the walls, not a favorite color, one
may suspect, for the decoration of rooms in bourgeois circles.
The whole sad gaiety of the characterization has great fascination.... We remain perplexed by the lady who so easily
dominates her exotic surroundings. Could she possibly be the
actress Marthe Mellot, married to Alfred Nathanson? She strongly resembles that lady and the identification fits like a glove.
For the nineties were the years of the Revue Blanche and
Vuillard's intimacy with the whole Natanson family. (S. Preston, op.cit., p. 84)

Although, as Preston admits, this shares with the best works of this period Vuillard's "flatness, total ambiguity of space and the stagnant airlessness of the interior", the obvious attempt to flatter his sitter provokes an identification with the commissioned works which lie well in his future.

And in fact there is no mystery about the identity of the sitter thanks to the following inscription on the verso, possibly by Josse Bernheim:

Portrait de Mme Delierre (qui fut l'amie de Lebaudy et celle
de Josse Bernheim-Jeune. C'est lui qui commanda ce portrait
à Vuillard)

This painting will be included in the forthcoming Vuillard catalogue raisonné being prepared by Antoine Salomon and Annette Leduc Beaulieu from the records and under the responsibility of Antoine Salomon.