In this expressionist work Kokoschka strove to capture the essence of his sitter, a young noblewoman afflicted with tuberculosis, with somber tones and stylized gestures.

[1] At his debut at the Vienna Kunstschau 1908, Kokoschka exhibited several provocative proto-expressionistic works, in particular The Dreaming Youths (Die Träumenden Knaben), an illustrated poem laden with sexually charged angst.

[2] Gustav Klimt and other leaders of the Secession defended Kokoschka from critics, who labeled him the "chief wild man" of the Kunstschau and blamed him for its financial failure.

[2][3] Kokoschka further scandalized Viennese polite society with the 1909 debut of his play Murderer, the Hope of Women, which with its dramatic and disturbing costumes and violent sexual imagery was among the first Expressionist dramas.

[4] While Murderer cost Kokoschka his income, it also brought him to the attention of Adolf Loos, a pioneering architect who opposed what he perceived as the superficiality and ornamental excess of the Secession.

[5] In Kokoschka Loos saw a potential ally in his war on ornament, and supported the younger artist by buying artwork from him and introducing him to the rest of his intellectual circle.

Her grandparents on her father's side were the ornithologist Francois Victor Massena and courtier Anne d'Essling; and her great-grandfather was Marshal of the Empire André Masséna.

[12] Kokoschka emphasizes the contrast between the Duchess's ravaged body and that lambent inwardness, seeing in her a reflection of "...those aristocratic women who used to seek consolation in their faith, back in the days of religious upheavals when the world was so godless that only mystics still believed in paradise, which they placed in their own hearts.

"[13] This kind of idealization was a common trope in fin-de-siècle thought - the "consumptive sublime," in which "women enveloped in illness were the visual equivalents of spiritual purity.

[24] The buyer, through the intermediary Fritz Steinmeyer, was the diplomat and art collector Paul E. Geier, who also purchased Franz Marc's Grazing Horses IV [de] at the auction.