The head and neck of a girl is drawn with layers of delicate, faint silverpoint lines on vertically oriented, cream-white paper. The girl is angled to our right and looks off in that direction with shaded eyes. She has broad, high cheekbones, a straight nose, and her full lips are closed with a faint suggestion of a smile and a dimple in the cheek we see. Her hair is parted down the middle and pulled loosely back and up. Her shoulders below the neck are sparsely sketched in. The drawing is done with fine, almost ghostly lines, which gives the portrait an ethereal, insubstantial look. The…
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Head of a Girl

Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851 - 1938)

c. 1909

Medium
silverpoint on prepared wove paper
Classification
Drawing
Dimensions
image (irregular): 19.05 × 17.15 cm (7 1/2 × 6 3/4 in.) ; sheet: 34.61 × 29.85 cm (13 5/8 × 11 3/4 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CG-W
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Bequest of James Parmelee, 1941)
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art