A male nude standing figure in pencil — the body in three-quarter view facing right, the left arm raised with the hand at the crown gathering or adjusting the hair, the right arm at the side with the hand loosely open. The figure is slender and young, the torso's chest broad at the shoulder and narrowing to the waist, the belly and lower body descending to cut off at the lower paper edge. The face is in right three-quarter view, the features briefly indicated — the nose, the lips — without elaborate description. The pencil marks are spare and searching, the characteristic single-contour approach applied to the male body.
The male nude is relatively rare in the collection's figure studies — the overwhelming majority of figure drawing subjects across the portfolios have been female. The male body here is drawn with the same economy and attention as the female figures: the contour single-pass, the interior marks minimal, the overall approach identical. What differs is the body's form — the narrower hip, the broader shoulder, the absence of breast — and the gesture's quality: the arm raised to the hair has a slightly self-conscious ease, the hand at the crown not adjusting an elaborate hairstyle but simply touching the head.
The small 9 by 12.25 format places this male nude in the intimate compact-sheet range alongside Work 1522. The pencil on warm cream paper gives the figure the tentative quality characteristic of pencil figure studies — the marks lighter and more searching than chalk or ink, the body described with a deliberateness that reads as attentive observation. Among the rare male nudes in the new portfolio, this is the most straightforward: a standing body, an arm raised, observed.