A back-oblique standing figure in black chalk — the right hand resting on the right hip, the elbow jutting to the right — with the most sustained and most layered tonal development of any back view in the narrow-format portfolio. The figure stands facing mostly away, the head turned slightly to the right with the hair at the crown described in a dense, hatched mass of overlapping marks, and the body below receiving a comprehensive shadow treatment: the entire left side from shoulder to ankle is covered in diagonal hatching built in multiple passes, producing a broad, even shadow zone that gives the figure sculptural depth and weight.
The black chalk is used here at its most tonal extreme in the back-view mode. Where Work 1425 [The Tonal Back] introduced sustained cross-hatching on the lower back and buttock zone, Work 1462 extends the shadow plane to the full height of the figure — a comprehensive shadow-left, light-right tonal division applied to the back view rather than the profile. The hatching is systematic: consistent diagonal direction throughout the shadow zone, the marks layered in two or three passes, the outer contour at the light edge clean and single-stroke. The hair at the crown receives the densest marks in the drawing, the head's mass described more heavily than any other zone.
The hand-on-hip gesture — the right arm bent at the elbow, the hand resting at the waist — introduces the only lateral extension in an otherwise vertical composition, the jutting elbow creating an angular interruption of the figure's right silhouette. This gesture connects to Work 1413 [The Hip Shift] in the earlier narrow-format sequence, where a similar hand-on-hip posture appeared in black chalk on aged cream paper. Here in white paper with more sustained tonal development, the same basic gesture reads with more sculptural weight.
Among all the black chalk back views in the narrow-format portfolio — 1413, 1421, 1422, 1425, 1462 — this work has the most developed tonal ambition, the shadow extending the full height of the figure. If Work 1426 [The Shadow Column] was the most formally resolved of the black chalk profile figures, Work 1462 is its back-view counterpart: the shadow column applied to the back view, the figure's posterior presented as a lit three-dimensional form rather than a silhouette. The two works together define the upper end of the black chalk tonal range in the new portfolio.