The pink rose was exhibited at the New English Art Club in London in 1891, where it attracted the attention of the painter Walter Sickert, who wrote to Blanche that ‘To my mind it is the best executed work that I have seen by you’. The model was Lucie Esnault, the youngest daughter of a locksmith in Auteuil, who often posed for Blanche between 1885 and 1893. Lucie is depicted seated in the artist’s studio in Auteuil wearing the same black bonnet in which she appears in Blanche’s L’Hôte, a large and important Salon painting of 1892 now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen.