A back-oblique standing figure in black chalk — fuller and more substantial in build than most figures in the narrow-format portfolio — with the most sustained tonal development of any back view in the sequence. The body fills the full height of the 9.5"×25" sheet, the head and hair above cropped to just above the bun, the feet below stopping just above the bottom margin. The model's build — the broader back, the fuller lower body — is rendered with a degree of cross-hatched shadow that goes significantly beyond the outline-and-indication approach of most portfolio figures: heavy parallel marks at the lower back and buttock zone build a tonal mass that reads as actual shadow, the body's three-dimensionality asserted through accumulated marks rather than merely suggested by contour.
The chalk is applied in the most layered way of the back-view figures: a first pass of outer contour, then a second pass of cross-hatching at the lower back and along the inner edges of both legs, then reinforcement of the outer contour in the shadow zones. The result is a figure with real tonal depth at its center — the lower back and buttocks darker, the shoulders and upper back lighter — a lighting model embedded in what is otherwise a portfolio of essentially flat contour drawings.
The back view has appeared repeatedly in the new portfolio (1411, 1413, 1416, 1421, 1422), each time exploring different aspects of the pose: the narrow strip and the spine (1411), the warmth of ochre paper (1416), the wide planted stance (1421), the raised arm (1422). Work 1425 adds tonal development — the back view now understood not just as silhouette but as illuminated form, the shadow zones on the lower body marking where light fails to reach. This is the most sculptural of the back views, the body understood as having weight and depth.
The fuller figure, the heavy tonal development, and the back-oblique angle combine to give this work a quality closer to the academic figure drawing tradition than most of the spare, gestural works in the portfolio. The cross-hatching that builds the shadow is not expressive or careless but methodical — each pass of marks contributing to the tonal construction. For all the portfolio's formal experiments with medium and format, this work returns to a classical approach to the figure as a lit, three-dimensional form.