Personnage dans un paysage

In a memoir, the present owner of this drawing relates, "On the Saturday evening of my first visit to Vence, Dubuffet started showing me a series of drawings he had made in the preceding few weeks. They were nine-by-twelve-inch India ink drawings. He started them by inking a sheet of very coarse sandpaper, then making an impression directly onto the sheet. He drew on this raw image, connecting dots and blobs, making new ones, until there was a dense, complex image. I asked him why some drawings had figures and others did not. 'Well,' he said, 'If I find the beginnings of a figure, I help it out.' I asked if I could buy one. He hesitated. 'These are the drawings I am keeping for myself.' Then, after a pause, he said, 'Choose one.' I studied them intently and picked one with a typical Dubuffet flattened figure in it."