Painted in a single day, Young Woman in White represents one of Robert Henri’s favorite professional models, the Czech-born Eugenie Stein. Henri is justly noted for the life-size, grand manner studio portraits of women, like this one, that he often sent to exhibitions to demonstrate his command of the full-length format. As its title suggests, this image is a monochromatic tonal study in the tradition of a painting that Henri greatly admired: James McNeil Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl. As in Whistler’s complex early works, Henri sought to balance his aesthetic inclinations with an attention to certain less idealized realities of his sitter’s appearance. He did not intend his portraits to be simple, literal likenesses of specific individuals. Instead, he used them to explore abstract qualities he described as "another dimension—that fascinating fourth if you like—which has to do with your concept of the significance of the whole—that ultra something which always engages your interest more than mere facts of the person standing before you." His realist tendencies, while sometimes difficult for 21st-century viewers to ascertain, were duly noted by critics, one of whom described another of Henri’s portraits of Stein as representing “that grand dame of the disreputable with her toothless, sunken jaw, her leery eyes, her great befeathered hat, flamboyant dress, and brown kid gloves.”
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