A horizontal reclining figure in green chalk — the third portfolio's second work and the first horizontal image in the green chalk series. The figure lies face-down, seen from behind, extending from left to right across the 19" width of the paper: the head at the left, hidden beneath crossed forearms and a mass of hair marks; the back arching gently in the middle; the buttocks at the composition's center, described with the same anatomical specificity as Work 1436 above; the legs extending to the right and the feet at the far edge, the toes barely indicated. A pillow or support is suggested at the left under the crossed arms.
The green chalk on white paper in horizontal format is among the most spatially expansive images in the new portfolio. The 19"×12.5" format gives the reclining body a wide lateral field — different from the tall verticality of the 9.5"×25" and 12.5"×19" standing figure sheets — in which the figure occupies the full horizontal extent of the paper. The chalk marks are applied with the portfolio's characteristic confidence, the outer contour of the back's upper edge drawn in a single sweeping line from the shoulder to the hip, the lower contour of the belly and thighs in a parallel sweep below. Interior marks at the crossed-arm zone at the left and at the buttock center provide tonal anchoring.
The face is completely hidden: the head is turned away, the crossed forearms covering everything from the chin upward, the hair spread over the remaining visible surface of the head. This concealment by posture — the model facing away and the arms providing a second barrier — is the most complete face-concealment in the new portfolio, even beyond the hair curtain of 1417, because there is genuinely nothing to see of the head at all above the neck: no hair crown, no profile line, just the mass of arms and hair. The figure as pure body, the person entirely absent.
The green chalk reclining figure forms a natural pair with the pencil reclining figure of Work 1433: both are horizontal, both are back-view recliners with the head at the left, both use the horizontal sheet to give the body full lateral extension. The difference in medium — pencil's delicacy against green chalk's botanical vividness — and in hair (the turban of 1433 versus the face-hiding pile of 1437) makes the pairing productive. Together they bracket the batch's extremes of reclining treatment and set up a recurring motif of the figure at rest that will continue through the third portfolio.