Reclining Sphinx — Pen-and-ink Drawing With Wash, 18th-century French School

Pen-and-ink drawing in brown ink, enhanced with brown and gray wash.

The oblong composition depicts a reclining sphinx in profile, resting on a rectangular plinth. The figure wears the nemes (a striped headdress with side flaps) encircled by a frontal band, with a long braid falling across the chest. The face, rendered in fine pen strokes, presents an idealized neoclassical profile rather than a direct observation of an Egyptian model. The elongated, lion-like body is rendered in wash with broad flat areas, leaving the paper unpainted to represent highlights; the tail curls in a spiral over the rump. The forepaws, with their detailed claws, extend slightly beyond the plane of the plinth.

The base bears a row of hieroglyph-like symbols—rectangular frames, discs, a bovine protome, birds, and chevrons—rendered in a rough style and lacking any decipherable epigraphic meaning.

With frame: 26.5 cm by 21 cm
Drawing only: 16.5 cm by 10 cm