A red chalk figure of extraordinary formal restraint — a back view seen from above, the body's upper portion filling the upper half of the composition, and at the very lower center, a single hand: fingers extended, the hand resting or pressing against something below the frame. Everything else is white.
The back — the shoulder blades, the spine's ridge, the upper arms — is described with the lightest red chalk marks, barely there, the form suggested rather than described. The contour that defines the back's outer edge is the most substantial mark in the upper composition. The hair at the crown falls loosely, a few strands described.
The hand at the lower center is the composition's opposite: described with the most specific marks in the entire drawing, each finger individually indicated, the knuckles and the wrist. This hand, in a drawing of near-total reduction, carries all the human specificity that the rest of the composition has stripped away. The back is form; the hand is person.
This drawing belongs with the most formally reduced works in the collection — the Ghost Figure (831), the Minimal Works series, the Reclining Silhouette (1099) — as evidence of Sidney's capacity for extraordinary restraint. Less, more, more completely.