A female nude, half-length, leaning forward, her arms before her breasts

Nude studies are rare among 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 sofas, has survived and is now in the British Museum and in private collections, P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, op. cit., nos. 578-83. The present sheet is executed solely in red chalk and may be a study of a woman bathing. Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat suggest a date circa 1716, while Margaret Morgan Grasselli dates the drawing to around 1718-9.