A large pencil portrait head in strict left-facing profile — one of the most technically sustained portrait drawings in the collection. The face occupies the left half of the horizontal composition, the ponytail extending from the fastener at the back of the skull to the far right edge of the paper. The hair streaming backward gives the drawing its extraordinary lateral energy, the face looking left while the hair reaches right, the whole composition stretched between two poles.
The hair is the drawing's supreme achievement. Every strand is individually described with long, parallel pencil strokes that follow the hair's direction from the crown through the fastener and down into the loose ponytail. The ear, caught between the face and the swept-back hair, is drawn with the Cothran ear-precision: helix, antihelix, tragus, earlobe — each element of the ear's architecture observed and placed correctly.
The face in strict profile is cleanly handled: the forehead line, the nose, the lips with their closed natural expression, the chin. The eye in profile — the lid, the brow — is described with careful tonal marks that give it depth without overstatement. The neck below transitions into the faintest indication of a shoulder.
The aged paper, warmer and softer than the standard cream, gives the pencil marks a different quality — the graphite sits in the grain with a subtle warmth. This is among the most formally resolved of the portrait heads: the composition has a clear logic, the hair's lateral extension giving it an almost cinematic quality, the face caught mid-motion, the hair blown back.