Konrad Mägi returned to Estonia in the late spring or early summer of 1912, but now, weakened by various illnesses, and depression becoming more and more dominant, he did not paint almost any major works in the next year. Both his letters and his newly clumsy painting style attest to a deep crisis.

This painting is the only work from this period where Mägi appears to have re-found balance. Mägi’s first portrait known to be painted in Estonia depicts Alide Luud (later Asmus), 18, who had studied to become a dentist and whom Mägi had met in Tartu cafés. Luud interacted with bohemians because she wanted to become an actor. The model is wearing a black confirmation dress and patterned scarf that is reminiscent of the figure on Meditation from a few years later. The model said she would sit for Mägi two or three times a week and later, once or twice a week, but the work was never finished and thus unsigned. Mägi gifted the painting to the model, but Alide’s later husband did not allow it to be hung on the wall because it was “fit only for a wall covering above a washbasin to prevent splashes”. This quotation is from a letter Alide Asmus sent to Tartu Art Museum, where she expresses her opinion of the painting, saying: “all blue, yellow, green, I’m not that ugly, you know.”

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