The image shows a woman in full length, wearing a long dress and standing at a table in profile against a blank pale wall, holding the edges of a print which is resting on the table. Bright light from a window in the top left of the photograph lights the front of the woman and the tabletop.

This is an example of the bromoil process invented around 1907, in which a bleached image is re-developed with pigment applied with brushes. ‘Pictorialist’ photographers favoured its broad tonal effects and diffuse detail. The print being ‘admired’ in the image is likely to have been a finely crafted photograph much like this one. [Gallery 100, ‘History of photography’, 2012-2013]

quoted from V&A Museum