Head of a Boy

David employs a restrained palette of black chalk, exploiting the medium’s capacity for delicate line and tonal variation. Subtle chiaroscuro model the boy’s features, allowing light and shadow to suggest volume on the paper’s bluish ground. The careful rendering of curls and facial planes reflects the artist’s academic training and his interest in precise draftsmanship.

Created toward the end of David’s early career, the drawing predates his revolutionary period and aligns with his academic practice of drawing from live models. The work has remained in private collections before entering a museum inventory, where it is catalogued as a representative example of David’s preparatory studies from the late 1770s.