This drawing is one of a series of five counterproofs of the Five Senses, all in lot 1127 of Mariette's sale and subsequently with Jacques Petit-Hory in Paris. The original drawings, from which these counterproofs were taken, were already in Sweden by the time of Mariette's sale, as is mentioned in the sale catalogue.
Of the Five Senses two, Smell and Sight, are represented as boys, and three, Taste, Hearing and the present one, as young women. The sense of Smell is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (J. Bean and L. Turcic, 15th-18th Century French Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986, no. 15, illustrated), and the three other senses were formerly on the London art market.
Mariette considered Bouchardon one of the best draughtsmen in Europe: he owned a considerable number of the sculptor's drawings which were divided into 59 lots in his sale. The engraver of the series, the Comte de Caylus, a critic and amateur, also engraved Bouchardon's drawings after intaglios in the King's Cabinet for Pierre-Jean Mariette's book, Traité des pierres gravées, published in 1750.