Vandercook was a New York client of Lempicka's, listed in her address book as "an author and lecturer". The painting he once owned - "The Pink Tunic" (B.84) - showed up on the New York flea market in 1971.

In the biography she devoted to her mother, Lizette de Lempicka-Foxhall informs us that "la belle" Rafaëla apparently approached Lempicka during one of the latter's daily morning walks in the Bois de Boulogne. The young woman, presented to us as a nymphomaniac, but not necessarily venal, is said to have struck Lempicka by her beauty ""...Never had I seen a more beautiful woman - enormous black eyes, a splendid body. I stopped her and asked: 'Miss, I am a painter and I would like you to come sit for me. Would you accept?'
She answered: 'Yes, why not?'
So I said to her: 'Well, then, come along. My car is here.' "
Lempicka seems to have been fully satisfied with her model, since she had her continue the sittings for over a year: for " The Pink Tunic" (B.84) in particular, but apparently she can also be recognized in "The Dream" (B.85), which is captioned "Rafaëla against a Green Background" in an article by Arsène Alexandre ("Tamara de Lempicka", La Renaissance de l'art français et des industries de luxe, July, 1929)

These were the years of Lempicka's greatest success. The museum of Nantes acquired her "Kizette in Pink" (B.81), and a number of rich collectors commissioned portraits - their own, of course, but also that of a wife and daughter for one, or of a mistress, for the other. At the peak of her talent, Lempicka was able to make the most of her feminine models, enhancing their charms with signs of the new spirit of the times. She thus imbued them with elegance and supreme nonchalance, sensuality and throbbing vitality. The portraits - and even the still lifes - belonging to this period convey contagious optimism in a triumphantly youthful and modernist vein. Success lent Lempicka wings, encouraging her to work and exhibit tirelessly. By now, she had found a certain signature style: a highly original, and effective, synthesis of Mannerism and toned down Neo-Cubism. This style was so well matched to the era that, in retrospect, it can be termed as emblematic of it.