Charcoal, graphite and pencil on thin artificial vellum, circa early 1970s. 483x406 mm; 19x16 inches. With the artist's estate signature ink stamp, lower right.
Provenance: the artist's estate; Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles; the Allan and Susan Marion collection, Beverly Hills; Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, private collection, with the gallery label on the frame back.
Exhibited: Looking In, Looking Out, Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, 2002; Charles White, Images of Dignity, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA, 2003 (traveling exhibition.)
This careful study of a woman's head is a strong example of the Charles White's later work, and his use of preparatory drawings. With similar strong cheek bones and profile, White appears to be revisiting the figure depicted in his Mother Courage, 1963, one of the artist's monumental linoleum cuts. White made several versions of this strong female figure, including his oil on canvas Mother Courage II, 1974, in the collection of the National Academy of Design, New York.
