Sargent arrived in Paris in 1874 and enrolled in the teaching studio of the portraitist Carolus-Duran, a friend of Edouard Manet and the Impressionists. Under Carolus's influence, Sargent participated in the prevailing Parisian enthusiasm for Spain and things Spanish. He probably made this softly rendered dramatically illuminated portrait study of a gitana (Spanish for gypsy) during his student years in Paris. The painting is the only work by Sargent given to the Metropolitan by George A. Hearn, a trustee and the Museum's most important donor of American paintings in the early twentieth century.