Young Woman In Profile

The Dutch painter Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1608-1651) was considered, during his lifetime, a major artist in the city of Amsterdam where he had settled and where he died prematurely at the age of 43. The artist therefore had a short but very brilliant career which began officially around 1633. Backer worked quickly and left a significant number of portraits (around 70 portraits are attributed to him with certainty), a genre in which he was particularly renowned but he has left us also left biblical or mythological scenes, without forgetting subjects of literary inspiration.
His lively and virtuoso drawings are sought after by amateurs, as evidenced by the high prices they can fetch in auction rooms.
Our elegant drawing, undoubtedly preparatory to a genre scene, shows us a young woman in profile, pointing to a person or an object with her right hand, the left hand gracefully placed on her hip. She wears a traditional headdress revealing part of her hair, as can be seen in many female representations of the Dutch "golden century". The posture of the young woman, animated and full of life, is brushed with precision in shades of gray skilfully enhanced with lines of white chalk. Our drawing is very close to a work kept in the Drawings Cabinet of the British Museum (n°1926,1009.5) Young woman standing, of a similar technique on gray-blue tinted paper and whose model is undoubtedly the same (see link below) drawing by Backer in the British Museum