This is a very early example of Josephine Müntz-Adams’s work, painted when she was around 27. The upper body of a seated woman, presumably the artist herself, appears to be looking down reading. It was painted in the latter half of her period of study at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, under GF Folingsby, before she left for Europe in the 1890s. Self-portrait represents a rare example of her early portraiture, a field in which she excelled and achieved considerable prominence during the 1890s and 1900s. Müntz-Adams lived in Brisbane from 1898 to 1903, teaching and exhibiting extensively, and again in 1917–22, when she played a significant part in Brisbane’s art community.