A standing girl wearing only red tights, Anne Summers recounts the circumstances under which it came to be created: "The idea for this painting had come when, arriving early one Thursday evening for her life session at George Bell's, Stokes caught the model undressing in preparation.

Warwick Lawrence, art critic for Brisbane's daily paper The Courier-Mail, described both the work's popularity with viewers and its quality, when he wrote of his visit to the exhibition: But I found a double-ring around Constance Stokes "Girl in Red Tights", with its flesh tints and background bathed in warm, red glowing light, a painting of considerable artistic merit as disturbing as it is stimulating.In 1953, a "significant"[3] exhibition titled Twelve Australian Artists was held at the Burlington Galleries in London.

Stokes had three works in the exhibition, which hung alongside those of Australia's most prominent twentieth-century artists, including Arthur Boyd, Russell Drysdale, William Dobell, Sidney Nolan, Lloyd Rees, Donald Friend and Frank Hinder.

Admired by director of the National Gallery Sir Philip Hendy, the work was proclaimed by the art critic at The Times as the "best picture in London that week".

[4] Anne Summers reports that the critic at the Sunday Observer said "Constance Stokes imparting a glow to her monumental figures has an impressive Girl in Red Tights".