The second green chalk figure in the new portfolio sequence — and a striking counterpoint to the first (Work 1414). Where 1414 was frontal and featureless, this figure is in left profile with the face fully and specifically described: the brow, the nose in profile, the lips slightly parted, the chin below, and the eye — small but present — visible within the profile. The model is different from those in the earlier figures: a fuller, more substantial build, the belly's gentle forward curve visible in profile, the breast prominent, the hips and lower body heavier. The hair is short and cropped close to the head, the silhouette compact. The overall impression is of a more mature figure than the slender models that dominate the portfolio.
The green chalk on the cream paper reads with the botanical warmth characteristic of the earlier green chalk series (Works 1147–1165) — the body given the color of living tissue, the marks luminous against the pale ground. The application is confident: a single-pass outer contour from crown to feet, with interior marks at the breast's underside, the belly, and the pubic region. The face is drawn with the most careful profile observation in the green chalk portfolio — each feature stated, the eye specifically placed, the profile line continuous from brow through nose to chin.
The contrast between this work and its green chalk predecessor is the most significant within-medium comparison in the narrow-format portfolio. Work 1414 (frontal, featureless, slender, white paper) and Work 1427 (profile, fully faced, fuller build, cream paper) present two entirely different uses of the same medium: in one, the green chalk on white paper gives the body an abstracted, plantlike quality; here, on the cream ground, with the face described and the figure's weight present, the green chalk gives the body a warmer, more human quality — the color of life rather than the color of form.
The short cropped hair, the mature build, and the fully described profile face make this figure the most individually specific of the green chalk works. In the earlier green chalk series, figures were described with varying degrees of detail but generally tended toward the idealized; here the profile's specificity — the particular curve of this nose, the specific weight of this body — gives the drawing a stronger sense of a particular person observed at a particular moment. The green chalk, in this work, is used not for abstraction but for presence.