MacNicol’s promising career was cut short when she died at the age of thirty-four from pregnancy complications. Little is known of the artist. After her widowed husband died, his second wife sold all of his and MacNicol’s paintings and many of them are now lost. This painting is one of few known works by her and relates to two other portraits (which she called ‘fancy heads’); titled The Ermine Ruff and Portrait of a Lady with her Fan. The influence of American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) can be seen in the decorative design and subdued tonality of this picture.