A female nude, half-length, in a shift leaning forward with her hands concealing her breasts

Nude studies are rare amongst Watteau's surviving drawings, since, as tradition has it, the artist destroyed the most sensual sheets before his death. However, a celebrated series of partly draped female nudes, reclining or seated on canaps, has survived at the British Museum and in a few private collections, P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, op. cit., nos. 578 -83. The present sheet is executed solely in red chalk, and may have been intended as a study for a woman bathing.
Margaret Morgan Grasselli dates the drawing to around 1718-9.