A portrait in green chalk — one of only two confirmed uses of green chalk in the drawing series (the other being 833) — and the only green chalk portrait head in the collection. The choice of green chalk for a portrait is highly unusual: where red chalk (sanguine) is a classical tradition, and blue pencil is the consistent medium of the life drawing series, green chalk for a portrait head places this work in entirely different tonal territory.
The subject is a woman seen in profile, her head turned to the left, the eyes downcast in the absorbed attitude of someone thinking or reading. The hair is swept back and to the right, a single large mass described in loose parallel strokes. The face profile — the nose, the lips, the chin — is drawn with confident single strokes, the profile reading as a silhouette that is nonetheless specific to this particular person.
The green mark on cream paper creates an unusual color relationship — neither the warmth of red chalk nor the cool formality of blue pencil but something more botanical, more vegetable, as if the figure has absorbed the color of the surrounding world. This tonal quality gives the portrait an atmospheric quality that the other drawing media don't achieve.
The portrait is technically assured but emotionally cool — the green distance creating a slight remove between the viewer and the subject. The subject, in any case, is not looking at us.