Chase is a perfect eclectic and borrowed freely from old masters such as Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn and Diego Velázquez, and from contemporaries such as Édouard Manet, James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. Here in the title of his painting he refers to tradition, but shows a woman dressed in modern attire. She is seen from behind in a dark, ambiguous setting that is pierced by a light pole suggesting a lightly opened door. Uninterested in his model's special identity, Chase draws attention to her dress, which he describes with expressive brushwork and subtle shades of white. Chase had painted a full-length portrait of his wife, entitled Lady in White (1894; private collection), of which a critic remarked when it appeared at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: "It is little more than a study of a white satin dress against a dark background, for her face has been turned away from the viewer". The same can be said of this painting.
