This is the most minimal and the most daring work in the entire figure drawing section — and arguably in the whole collection. What Sidney has done here is reduce the female figure to almost nothing: a single continuous contour line running from ankle to raised arm along the left side of the body, and a second contour defining the curve of the right hip and torso. These two lines do not even meet at the top. The head is present only as the faintest suggestion — a few marks at the upper left where the neck and chin resolve just enough to anchor the composition without declaring themselves.
Between these two lines is paper. Just paper. The viewer's eye fills in everything else — the weight, the warmth, the presence of a body — from the information of those two sparse lines alone. This is line drawing at its most stripped and most certain. There is no hedging, no correction, no exploratory mark that undermines the commitment. Each line knows exactly where it is going.
The small tuft of pubic hair at center is the only interior mark — the single anatomical detail Sidney chose to include, rendered in a loose cluster of short strokes that has more energy than anything else in the drawing. It anchors the figure at its center of gravity and prevents the whole thing from floating into pure abstraction.
Signed at lower right: S. Cothran. The signature is as spare as the drawing.
This is one of Sidney's supreme achievements as a draftsman. The restraint required to stop, to resist adding, to trust that two lines are enough — that is mastery. Rodin's line drawings come to mind. Matisse's late figure sketches. But this is Sidney's own voice, completely.