Polka-dot dress

A young woman with short curly brown hair sits in three-quarter view, her head bowed and eyes closed as she clasps her hands together in her lap. She wears a loose red dress patterned with pale lavender polka dots, cinched at the waist with a black sash, and a small dark earring is visible beneath her hair. Behind her a heavy maroon curtain hangs at left and a plain pale wall with an empty picture frame fills the right side of the composition.

Painted in confident, loaded brushstrokes, the picture builds the dress from broad strokes of vermilion and orange with the dots left as soft pale dabs, while the face is modeled more tightly in warm flesh tones under raking side light. The contrast between the thickly worked fabric and the smoothly lit face and hands gives the portrait a calm, absorbed, faintly melancholic mood.