Margaret Morgan Grasselli remarked in her recent article that the unusual portrait-like quality of the image may suggest that it was a gift to the child's parents, and a work made as an end in itself, and that 'the standing child is drawn in Watteau's most tranquil, evocative style. Executed almost entirely in a crumbly black chalk whose porous strokes seem to be suffused with muted light, the figure is enveloped in gently drifting light and air that soften the image and enhance the thoughtful mood', Grasselli, loc. cit.
The present drawing is comparable to a study in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, (K.T. Parker and J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau, II, Paris, 1957, no. 702) used by Watteau in his Comédiens Italiens now at the National Gallery in Washington. The child is also close to the central figure in Iris, c'est de bonne heure in Berlin.
The drawing was engraved by François Boucher in the Figures de Différents Caractères de Paysages et d'Etudes dessinées d'après Nature par Antoine Watteau, the first attempt at a catalogue of Watteau's drawings. The two volumes were published after the death of the artist by his friend Jean de Julienne respectively in 1726 and 1728. The first contained 133 plates and the second 218. Most of the drawings engraved came from the collection of Jean de Julienne to whom the artist had given some 450 sheets during his last illness. To that corpus were added various drawings given by the artist to other friends like Henin, the Abbé Haranger, the dealer Gersaint, and the Comte de Caylus. Of the fifteen artists that took part in the enterprise Boucher was the most active: he engraved 105 plates.
It was a custom of the time to dress children, whether boys or girls, in the same way until they reached the age of six.