According to Sabine Rewald, this drawing depicts Sheila Pickering at the age of seventeen, when she was living in Paris. Balthus also painted a portrait of her in the same year; in this work Balthus inscribed an open book on her lap "An Authentic Portrait of Her Highness, Sheila, Princess of Cats ... Painted by His Majesty, Balthus, The King of Cats Himself." Sheila Pickering also appears as the sleeping figure in the foreground of Balthus' large painting The Mountain, 1937 (coll. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).