The painting shows a woman, naked except for a bead necklance, sitting in an armchair. As we look at the picture, the woman and the chair do not face us squarely, instead they are angled to our left. Her gaze does not meet ours but looks over our left shoulder. The woman's left leg is crossed over her right. Her elbows rest on the arms of the chair and her head rests in her hands. The bottom of the canvas cuts her legs off above the knee. She fills the painting so that we see very little around her, except for a number of lines that we read as skirting boards and dado rails.