The portrait is set on a red and pink background, without decoration, door or window, which suggests the corner of a cafe.

She wears a red and black plaid dress with a high neck, and holds a cigarette in her right hand.

On the table with a white marble top are a cigarette box marked with the name Sylvia von Harden, a matchbox bearing the German eagle and a conical glass three-quarters full.

''You have brilliantly characterized yourself, and all that will lead to a portrait representative of an epoch concerned not with the outward beauty of a woman but rather with her psychological condition.

The portrait was recreated in the opening and closing scenes of the film Cabaret (1972) by Bob Fosse, set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic.