This is Else Berg, a fellow artist and friend of Leo Gestel. The painters, who knew each other from Amsterdam, worked together in Bergen, a village in the province of North-Holland popular with artists. Berg is holding a cigarette, which many considered unwomanly and controversial at the time. Yet her boldness suited Gestel’s experimental style perfectly – his brightly coloured painting is more an exercise in the latest angular style of the Cubist movement than a lifelike portrait.