A seated young woman clasping her forehead (recto); A reclining woman, bust-length, her arm raised to her head (verso)

Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s preferred graphic medium was red chalk; drawings rapidly sketched in pen and ink and wash, like the present one, are rare in his œuvre. Similar examples are the sheet with a Group of figures with two men trying to tie the hooves of a dead deer at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (inv. 1074; E. Munhall, Greuze, the Draftsman, exhib. cat., Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and New York, The Frick Collection, 2002, no. 75, ill.); a Family scene in an interior in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1972.224.3; see ibid., no. 88, ill.), and a drawing of Two frightened children, sold at Christie’s, Paris, 27 May 2020, lot 60.
On the verso of the present sheet is depicted, in red chalk, a reclining young woman holding her forehead. The figure is one of the typical characters depicted by Greuze in his paintings, in which he emphatically portrayed the passions of the human soul.