Study of a seated nude figure

A prolific draftsman, Puvis de Chavannes liked to prepare each figure for his paintings or large-scale frescoes with studies in black chalk, sometimes heightened with white and often on colored paper. The young woman on this sheet is close to some of the figures in The Summer, a painting presented at the Salon in 1891 and now at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris (A. Brown Price, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Catalogue raisonné of the Painted Work, New Haven, London, 2010, II, cat. 352, ill.).