The picture shows a light-haired girl in a red dress. She faces the viewer at knee height. A bunch of fluffy hair falls on her left shoulder. With her left hand, she leans against a chair placed sideways and squeezes a handkerchief in her right hand. The heroine of the painting stands in a room with a uniform grey-beige background, slightly tinted green. In the right corner of the composition, above the chair, two delicate orchids are visible. The viwer is drawn towards the girl’s dress – a formal dress with characteristic puff sleeves, whose red is the most important colour and composition element of the work. It also brings out the contrast between the girl’s blonde hair and delicate features.
The girl and the flowers cast gentle shadows on the wall behind them. The role of light in this case cannot be overestimated – its specific character brings out the individual shapes in the picture. It also gives a kind of a mystery to the portrayed girl.
Let us also note that you can hardly see the contours of the individual shapes, which give the impression of several shaky forms. At the same time, Pankiewicz has accurately depicted the girl's features; we have no doubt what she looked like. According to Irena Kossowska, ‘subtle sfumato melts the sharpness of the drawing, whilst sophisticated colour harmonies and dissonances play a key role’.
It is worth emphasising this opinion – these contrasts are apparent because, in the end, the image is arranged into a harmonious whole. The picture is free of unnecessary accessories and shows a simple but elegant outfit, loose hair and an almost uniform background. There are no decorative elements that might take the viewer’s eyes away from the main character.
It’s also worth underscoring that placing an intense, sometimes even contrasting, red element on a painting was one of the more frequent tricks appearing in modernist painting. There were a lot of possibilities – the artists willingly painted poppies, red umbrellas of women on a walk or scarves in this colour, thrown by women on their shoulders or heads. In the case of Pankiewicz, however, this effect was particularly strongly exploited. Red becomes the dominant colour in the painting, which determines the whole colour tone of the work.