The present drawing is dated by Opperman early in Oudry's career, circa 1715. The technique and the composition are close to the ones of a series of drawings constituting Oudry's Livre de raison, now in the Louvre, L. Duclaux, Inventaire général des dessins, école française, Nadar - Ozanne, Paris, 1975, pp. 117-125, no. 219, illustrated. The Livre de raison was used by Oudry as a record of all the portraits he made. The two volumes were respectively begun in 1713 and 1717. The sitters, the date and the price of the canvas can be identified by Oudry's inscriptions. A number of pages of the Livre de raison were cut out from the Louvre albums: originally there were 211 leaves, some bearing two portraits; however only 104 portraits are now left. As early as 1771, when the album was in the Huquier sale, only 107 drawings were recorded.
The present drawing is of a very finished type and may well have been cut out from Oudry's Livre de raison.
This is one of the very few of Oudry's portrait drawings that show the figure full length. The identification of one of the figures in the background as Arlequin suggests that the present sitter is an actress.