"The sitter is Seedo. Helen Lessore, who probably showed the painting in her Beaux Arts Gallery, London, in 1961, considered this work to be of particular significance, the ‘breakthrough' referred to as coming after a long period of gestation: The ‘breakthrough' seems to have occurred about 1960 to 1961. After a succession of seated half-lengths of Seedo, somnolently brooding like an Eastern idol, there is one in which the colour, though still sombre, begins to glitter darkly, the pose no longer has that settled calm, and the whole figure appears to be uneasily twitching into life, like a Tibetan devil-dancer; a flame even seems to be issuing from the mouth. (Lessore 1986, p. 149)"