From a group of about a dozen gouaches on blue paper made by Tissot in the early 1870s as preliminary studies for his first London pictures. They all depict single figures of women, and are drawn from life with great accuracy and freedom.
Krystina Matyjaszkiewicz draws particular parallels between this drawing and a Seated woman in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (James Tissot, 1836-1902, exhib. cat. London, Barbican Art Gallery, and elsewhere, 1984-85, no. 49), which is preparatory to The Captain and the Mate (op. cit., no. 48) and to a Standing woman (sold Christie's, New York, 24 May 1989, lot 340), a study for The Return from the Boating Trip. These two drawings, which date from 1872-3, show the same model as the present drawing, wearing the same hat and with her hair dressed in the same way.
We are grateful to Dr Krystyna Matyjaskiewicz for confirming the attribution to James Tissot, on the basis of a photograph, and for her help in the cataloguing of this lot.