The portrait of Catharina Josephina (Cato) Biben (1858–1889) dates from 1882, a year before her marriage to Dr. Cornelis Jacob den Tex, son of the famous mayor of Amsterdam. The commission for the portrait came after Thérèse Schwartze’s definitive breakthrough in 1881. From that year onwards she was much sought after by leading families as a portrait painter. Schwartze owed her popularity to her accessible style, by which a good likeness was combined with fluent brushwork. The portrait of Cato Biben is striking with its powerful vertical format and unforced composition. Her use of colour and light remind one of the seventeenth-century Spanish painter Velasquez, one of Schwartze’s sources of inspiration.