A young woman in a bright yellow dress sits in profile, leaning back against a large pink and lilac cushion as she reads a small book held up in one hand. Her head is bent, her brown hair is gathered in a knot tied with a violet ribbon, and she wears a white ruffled collar and bows at her sleeve. The background is a plain dark brown with a pale panel at the right, and the brushwork is quick and broad, especially in the glossy folds of the dress and cushion. She is one of the 'fantasy figures' Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted around 1769, half-length pictures said to have been done in about an hour each.

A sheet of his thumbnail sketches that surfaced at auction in Paris in 2012 records sitters' names for the others, but not for this one, so she remains anonymous. X-rays show she first looked straight out at the viewer. After Paris sales from 1776, it belonged to the New York collector Alfred W. Erickson, and the National Gallery of Art bought it in 1961 at the sale of his widow, with funds from Ailsa Mellon Bruce.

It is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.