This painting is from one of Kossoff's most famous series, Nude on a Red Bed.

In the catalogue to Leon Kossoff's Tate Gallery retropsective in 1996 Paul Moorhouse writes about the essential qualities of Kossoff's group of Nude on a Red Bed paintings, a series painted between 1968-72 at the same time as his famous pictures of a Children's Swimming Pool:

"The image is carried by the flow of paint, which sweeps in a continuous flow of energy around the board... Kossoff's use of line also divides the image into broad areas of colour - which convey an atmosphere of intimacy and introspection. This emphasis on colour as a vehicle for feeling is the principal characteristic of Kossoff's paintings of the figure and landscape during the 1970s. He began to experiment with a range of non-local colours whose effect is evocative rather than descriptive."

The handling of paint and the fact that Kossoff's concentration is on the figure, not the face, suggest that the present painting is likely to have been one of the earlier pictures in this series. The subject is the artist's wife.

This series culminated in one of Kossoff's most powerful and celebrated paintings, Nude on a Red Bed, 1972, formerly in the Saatchi Collection.