The subject of Stefan Hirsch's portrait, Aline Meyer Liebman, was a pioneering collector of American and European paintings and photographs from the 1920's to the 1940's, as well as a painter in her own right. She was a close friend and client of Alfred Stieglitz, and through him knew Marsden Hartley, Joseph Stella, Georgia O'Keeffe, and many other artists whose works she collected. Hirsch painted her in a simplified, flat, self-consciously naive style, influenced in part by American folk painting.