This sculpture is related to a series of heads of crying girls which Rodin executed before 1885 for bas-reliefs he intended to place at the base of each leaf of The Gates of Hell (see lot 139 for a later related subject). Rodin exhibited a version of this subject in his 1900 Exposition, and also carved several versions in marble. The present work is related to the marble in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, in which the head emerges from a roughly-cut background.