The subject of this portrait was a friend of McIntosh Patrick, who also attended Glasgow School of Art. Dorothea Hannah was from a Scottish-Irish background, who lived in Hungary in the mid-1930s. McIntosh Patrick had won prizes for portraiture at art school and this picture, painted in the year of his graduation, is one of the few surviving portraits of the period. The artist had a natural sense of design, which is shown in this portrait by the way the subject is posed and the use of a strong side-light from the right, which highlights the sitter's features.