This painting was bought from Slaes Le-Roy auctioneers, 83 Montagne de la Cour, Brussels.The brothers Henri (1815-1906) and Arthur Le Roy (1958-1932), mostly dealt in 16-18th century Dutch and Flemish artists, and references to L Kern remain elusive. 

The painting of a woman in 'Arabian' dress, resting against a stone basin or well, shares some formal and iconographic similarities with a work by Ary Scheffer in the Wallace Collection, depicting 'Margaret at the Fountain', an episode from Goethe's Faust (1808). Scheffer's central figure is dressed more chastely and is less exoticised than Kern's 'Arabic Woman'. It may be that the model is a western woman adopting Orientalist dress, as her shirt or loose dress is worn somewhat unconvincingly - her collar is held close around her neck by a heavy pearl necklace, but gapes open beneath her collarbone, a loosely tied scarf at her waist the only means of ensuring her modesty.