The sitter is Alick Schepeler, a secretary at 'The Illustrated London News', whom John met in 1906 and drew obsessively in the years 1906-7. John titled some of his drawings of Schepeler, 'Undine' the water-sprite. She also sat for paintings such as 'La Séraphita' which was burnt in one of the artist's cigarette-fires during the 1930s. Technically, the Alick Schepeler drawings display, more than any other group, the use of oblique shading, moving downward from right to left
(see M. Easton and M. Holroyd, The Art of Augustus John, London, 1974)