The eighty-one-year-old Lady Oxford appears in profile in this photograph. Her face is cast in shadow and appears somewhat like a silhouette. Her eye, the base of her nose and her mouth folds are not visible. The volume of her head is emphasized by a light shining from the side of the picture onto the back of her hair and her left cheek. The background is bright on the left-hand side of the picture. On the right side, the background is taken up by a grey curtain. Lady Oxford’s body is shaded and dark. The slightly blurry quality of the image, the way Lady Oxford is posing with her mouth slightly open and the messy state of her hair convey a sense of spontaneity. This portrait made Lucia Moholy one of the most prominent British portrait photographers.

After fleeing Germany, Lucia Moholy established her photography studio in Mecklenburgh Square in the London district of Bloomsbury in 1935. She had contact with a loose association of intellectuals, scientists and authors known as the Bloomsbury Set. These connections resulted in her first commissions for portraits. Some of the portraits are, in keeping with the wishes of the person who commissioned the work, in the style popular at the turn of the century. The portrait of Emma Countess of Oxford and Asquith however takes inspiration from Moholy’s portrait style from the 1920s.