During the winter of 1918-1919 a young eighteen year old girl, Antoinette Arnoux, became Matisse's model, posing for the striking series of paintings. According to N. Watkins, "Matisse wanted to express what he called 'the ideal and the particular' in different aspects of a model's personality. In a series of paintings and drawings of the model Antoinette ... he achieved some of the most perfect images of his entire career. Antoinette appears in a succession of guises. Her face sometimes has the podgy fullness of a young girl, at others a detatched aristocratic look, accentuating her high cheekbones ... The process of refinement went from drawing in to painting and from painting back into drawing". (Matisse, Oxford, 1984, pp. 154-155.)

Wanda de Guébriant has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this drawing.