The work above is part of a series of studio model studies executed in Paris. From 1874–1875 the artist was enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Here he learned to draw and paint from the live model and executed dozens of similar works from this period. From the quality of the work, likely executed at the age of 21, one can see Edelfelt's immense talent for painting flesh tones and the human form.

     Albert Edelfelt was a visual artist born 1854 in Porvoo, the son of the Swedish architect Carl Albert Edelfelt and Alexandra Brandt. At the age of 15 he began his formal studies in art in 1869 at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society in Helsinki and continued as a student of Adolf von Becker from 1871–1873. He then received a scholarship from the Finnish government to study history painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. He studied under Nicaise de Keyser, and won an award for excellence for his painting "Alexander the Great on his deathbed."
    In the autumn of 1874 he moved to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the instruction of the French painter Jean-Léon Gerome. He shared a small studio with a Finnish friend at 24 Rue Bonaparte.
In the early 1880s, Edelfelt began to adapt some of the characteristics of the new Impressionist movement's  natural settings, particularly parks and gardens and the seashore – intimate domestic settings, the play of light on the figures and rapid execution, to capture the sensation of the moment.
    In 1881 he visited Saint Petersburg, where the Russian Academy had awarded him an honorary membership in 1878. The Grand Duke Vladimir, brother of the Russian Emperor, commissioned him to make portraits of his children. This led to another commission to paint the children of Czar Alexander III of Russia. In 1896 he returned to Russia to make a portrait of Czar Nicholas II.

    Edelfeld's portrait of Louis Pasteur in his laboratory, painted in 1885, had great success at the Paris Salon of 1886, and became one of the most familiar images of the scientist. It gained the painter the French Legion of Honor when he was only thirty-five years old.
    In Finland, he was one of the founders of the Realist art movement. He influenced several younger Finnish painters and helped fellow Finnish artists such as Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Gunnar Berndtson to make their breakthrough in Paris. Edelfelt was one of the first Finnish artists to achieve international fame.

     Albert Edelfelt is considered one of the most notable artists of the Golden Age of Finnish Art. A museum under his name operates in Porvoo. In 2001 the Turku Art Museum and Tikanojas Art Museum held an exhibition titled, "Edelfelt in Paris". He was later selected as the main motif on a Finnish commemorative coin celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth, "the €100 Albert Edelfelt and painting commemorative coin", minted in 2004. In 2022 the Petit Palais in Paris and the Musée Jacquemart-André held an exhibition covering the works of Albert Edelfelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

     In the book "Art in Finland" (Helsinki, 1953) the author Elia Pajastie wrote that the artist was, "a noble patriot, a cultivated and strongly attractive personality and man of the world, well-known and well received in princely courts and intellectual circles everywhere in Europe, he was the cultural ambassador of a remote country at a difficult period. It was through him that lasting artistic contacts with France were made."

     The artist is represented in these public institutions:

• National Gallery in Helsinki

• Helsinki City Museum

• Turku Art Museum

• Tikanojas Art Museum

• Nationalmuseum of Sweden

• Gothenburg Museum of Art

• The British Museum

• The Hermitage Museum

• Petit Palais (City of Paris Museum of Fine Art)

• Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg Russia

• Musée d'Orsay

• National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

• Philadelphia Museum of Art

• National Gallery of Denmark

• National Museum in Warsaw

• Albert Edelfelt Studio Museum

• Didrichsen Art Museum

• Hiekka Art Museum

• The Old Town Hall, Porvoo Museum

• Vantaa City Museum

• Serlachius Museums in Mänttä, Finland