This is a portrait of Cowie’s first daughter, Ruth, who was born in 1923, and would have been about ten years old at the time. It was painted in Cowie’s studio, in the garden of his house in Burnside, a suburb of Glasgow. Ruth is wearing a dress she had outgrown, which was lengthened by the addition of red cloth at the hem, sleeves and collar. Cowie gave her a paint rag to hold. He often repainted his earlier works: here the head was repainted about ten years later. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1945.