Black chalk, 53 x 60 mm. Verso: Head of a man in profile. Black chalk, point of brush in grey and grey wash. The chalk seems to have been so hard that it has left parallel marks and in some places indented the paper. No watermark. Chain lines: 26 mm. Inscribed at the upper left, in red chalk, No 8. Numbered on the verso, in pen and brown ink, 1820 (Sparre) and 206 (struck out).

The sketch is cut at both top and bottom, since the man’s head on the verso was traditionally considered the most important motif, and the numbers and collector’s mark were placed there. Hofstede de Groot and Kruse were unaware of the existence of the present recto, and Kruse did not believe that the head of a man was by Rembrandt. However, it seems that the original chalk sketch has been reworked with the brush by a different hand, changing its character. Except for the wash, the underlying chalk study could perhaps be compared to a sheet with studies of heads in Rotterdam.

The sketch of a woman holding a child was discovered by Sumowski, who dated it around 1639–40 on the basis of the occurrence of a similar figure on the extreme right of the etching Mordecai’s Triumph (Bartsch 44). A comparable chalk study of a woman holding a child is found in a drawing in the Lugt Collection. The hard kind of chalk used seems to be the same, and in both cases the drawings have been sacrificed for those on the recto. The same kind of chalk also seems to have been used in the studies of heads in Rotterdam, mentioned above. Benesch dates our drawing and the one in the Lugt Collection c. 1635, the one in Rotterdam c. 1637. There are also numerous pen studies of women and children from that period, and a similar pose is found in a drawing in Rotterdam. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 311]