Study of a Woman's Head

This pencil sketch by Francis Augustus Lathrop exemplifies the figure studies that underpinned late-nineteenth-century illustration. Two views of a woman's face—one three-quarter, one profile—demonstrate the anatomical precision demanded of commercial artists working for newspapers and magazines. Lathrop's confident line work and cross-hatching show mastery of form essential to the emerging field of newspaper illustration, where artists translated human expression into print. Such studies were foundational to the visual vocabulary that would define the newspaper comic strip, born within a decade of this drawing's creation.