A left-profile ink portrait of a young woman — the face in clean left profile, the nose slightly upturned, the chin small and specific, the eyelash described as a few brief bold strokes from the upper lid. At the crown, the hair is gathered and a ribbon or bow tie is visible: several ink marks at the top of the head describing the bow's two loops and the trailing ends, the hair gathered beneath it. Below the face the neck descends to the bare shoulders, briefly indicated. The ink is bold and confident, the profile outer contour drawn with a flowing single line and the interior marks — the eye, the ear, the bow — placed with precision.
The bow or hair ribbon at the crown is the portrait's most charming and most specific detail. It is the only bow or hair ornament in the entire new portfolio and gives this figure an immediate social and generational identity — a young woman in the mid-twentieth century, her hair tied with a ribbon in a manner specific to that era. The ear below the ribbon is described with the characteristic ear-mark specificity: the helix, the lobe, the canal. The earring-or-stud detail at the lobe adds a further note of personal specificity.
This portrait, along with Work 1495, appears to be from the same sitting or the same series — both on ochre paper, both in the same bold ink, both depicting what may be the same face from different angles. Work 1494's left profile gives the face one set of information; Work 1495's near-frontal gives another. Together they constitute a two-view portrait study, the face understood in the round through two complementary approaches. The ribbon at the crown of 1494 does not appear in 1495, suggesting either a different moment in the same session or a different model.