Grant studied at Westminster School of Art and in Paris. He discovered Post-Impressionism through Roger Fry's seminal exhibitions of 1910 and 1912. This portrait was painted in the year that Grant became the director of Fry's Omega Workshop. Its intense colours recall Matisse and the Fauves. Katherine or 'Ka' Cox (1887-1934) was a member of the circle of Rupert Brooke, known as the Neo-Pagans. A particular friend of Virginia Woolf, she frequently posed for Duncan Grant in 1912-13. Cox had a distinctive dress style and invariably wore a 'pince-nez.'