The main artistic devices used by Egon Schiele were always illustration and lines, both of which carry a profound spiritual and psychological charge. His work is characterized by a marked delicateness that took on an accentuated eroticism in later drawings. From around 1909 to 1910, Schiele finally shed the influence of his master, Gustav Klimt. He discarded the backgrounds in his drawings and paintings and began to place his figures over empty spaces. The absence of anecdotes, resulting in a lack of theatricality, allowed him to present his images—his female figures—in a very tangible way. One that conveys their psychology while inciting reflection, as is the case with the drawing at hand.

Despite being depicted as sleeping—in a dreamy state that recalls the portrait of his sister Gerti from the same period; both young women, but perhaps the one depicted in the oil painting being older—the work invites the viewer to let themselves go and relate to the subject’s tenderness, which is warm yet simultaneously melancholic.