Technique

The washes were mixed with white body colour, applied with a full brush, and dry with hard edges. Highlights clarified the shapes and shone with an opalescent quality against the hazy background. A pencil line was drawn over the paint, accentuating the extreme curve of her back.

Some washes on the floor, the blue line in front of her knee and on her hands, are traces of an earlier drawing, upside down, of a girl in a blue cap with yellow ribbons on cap and dress, leaning on a rail. Her face was scraped out.

Conservation History

The brown fibrous paper has a slight grain and holds chalk well. It has darked at the edges. It has been cut unevenly down the top and right sides. There are traces of glue and gilt from the old mount.