A back-oblique standing figure in green chalk — the left arm raised overhead, the hand extending beyond the upper margin of the paper, the fist or open hand cut off at the top edge. The figure stands in a slight three-quarter back view, the right shoulder more visible than the left, the body turning as it reaches upward. A compact bun or rolled-hair arrangement sits at the back of the head, the nape of the neck visible below it. Below the reaching arm, the body descends in the characteristic narrow-format contour: the back and buttock in clean profile, the legs extending to the feet at the lower edge.
The green chalk here is on a slightly warmer, creamier ground than the brilliant white of Work 1456 — giving the marks a softer, less vivid quality. The raised arm receives more marks than in the typical spare back view: the upper arm's outer contour, the elbow's bend, the forearm ascending to the paper's upper edge, each zone drawn with attention to the arm's specific angle and the gesture's particular extension. The arm cutting off at the top of the paper creates an unusual compositional open-endedness: the gesture is incomplete, the hand beyond the frame, the reach continuing outside the image.
The raised-arm back view has a direct precedent in the ink dancer of Work 1431, where both arms reached outward asymmetrically. Here in green chalk, with a single arm reaching and the body in a quieter back-oblique stance, the gesture reads differently — less about athletic extension and more about upward reaching, the body oriented toward something above and beyond the frame. The cropped hand at the paper's top is the composition's most striking formal decision: the paper's edge becomes the horizon of the reach, the destination implied but invisible.
The green chalk's botanical connotation — the body as growing thing — suits the upward reach particularly well. Among the four green chalk standing figures in the 9.5"×25" format (1414, 1427, 1456, 1458), this is the most vertically dynamic: the arm extending above the paper's top, the body oriented upward, the composition breaking its own frame. The cream ground's warmth and the gesture's incompleteness together give this figure a quality of longing or aspiration absent from the more contained green chalk works.