Known as a “painter’s painter,” Beckmann employed thick waxy paint and developed a personal style relying on compressed space and the ample use of black. While his imagery often brings together obscure mythology, theatrical references, and social critique, this painting has a more domestic theme, depicting the artist’s second wife, Mathilde Beckmann (1904-1986). She sits low in the picture, nearly eclipsed behind the wine glass and the erotically suggestive conch shell. The arrangement of the figure beside the decorative fabric recalls works by Henry Matisse (1869-1954), whose numerous odalisque paintings of the 1920s would have been familiar to Beckmann from his regular trips to Paris.