In his later years, Thomas Eakins turned increasingly to portraiture, and most of his sitters were friends and people he admired. Commissions were rare. Unlike his portraits of men, in which he was sensitive to the sitter's public self, Eakins's depictions of women focus on their vulnerability and their emotional tenderness. Shown in a private moment, Maud Cook, dressed in a glowing pink dress, tilts her head away from the viewer and toward the light, which casts strong shadows revealing the structure of her face. The same warm light bathes the exposed skin of her neck and upper chest, imparting to the portrait a subtle glow. Years later, Cook described the portrait to the artist's biographer: "As I was just a young girl my hair is done low in the neck and tied with a ribbon. Mr. Eakins never gave the painting a name but said to himself it was like ‘a big rosebud.’"