The painting was exhibited in 1921 with the title Seated Figure. The identity of the sitter has not been satisfactorily established, though she may well be the poet Edith Sitwell or Iris Barry, film critic and founder of the London Film Society. Barry was Lewis’s mistress from 1918-21 and is the subject of one of Lewis’s most famous paintings, Praxitella. Sitwell also features in a seated portrait by Lewis. The artist produced a series of drawings and paintings of seated women in the early 1920s, including a portrait of Virginia Woolf.