Head of a Girl

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

National Gallery of Art

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 artist signed the drawing in the lower right corner, “T W Dewing.”