A two-sided work on a single sheet of the 12.5"×19" portfolio paper — the PDF records 1408 with Side B listed as 1409 — presenting two radically different poses of what appears to be the same model in the same session. The recto (1408) is horizontal: a reclining figure seen from behind, the body extending from lower-left to upper-right across the paper, the back presented as a landscape of shoulder and hip. The arms cross in front of the head — one forearm visible, the elbow pointing right — and the long hair flows in loose strands away from the head toward the upper edge of the composition. The legs below the hips recede to the left, only partially described.
On the recto, the sanguine lines are extremely spare — perhaps the lightest hand of the entire new portfolio. The figure's outer contour is drawn once, the interior almost entirely empty, the vast white field of paper surrounding the figure given almost as much weight as the body itself. A few short parallel strokes at the hip suggest the curve of the buttock; otherwise the body is pure outline, trembling at the edge of visibility.
The verso (1409) is vertical and presents a standing figure in one of the most extreme poses in the entire figure drawing collection: the body arched backward from the waist, the head thrown so far back it appears inverted at the upper right of the composition, the loose hair streaming upward from the crown as several separate trailing marks. The torso below bends through a dramatic reverse curve — chest forward, pelvis back — the spine pressed into an arc of maximum tension. The arms hang loosely at the sides, the hands barely indicated, the feet below described in the characteristic quick strokes. The lines here are multiple and searching rather than single-pass, the body's extreme position requiring several attempts to locate the edge.
Together these two sides present a study in extremes: the horizontal resting back versus the vertical arching body; the nearly still versus the most kinetic pose in the portfolio sequence. The hair in both drawings — flowing flat in one, streaming upward in the other — functions as a register of the body's relationship to gravity. The two-sidedness of the sheet means these poses were drawn in proximity, possibly in sequence, the same paper turned in the hand between the reclining and the standing pose. Among all the figure drawings in the collection, Work 1409's backward arch — the thrown-back head, the hair streaming against gravity — is the most extreme single-pose drawing yet encountered.