Rodin was a prolific draftsman who produced nearly eight thousand drawings in a variety of styles. The graphite and watercolor work belongs to his ‘late manner’—characterized by remarkable economy of line and the use of watercolor wash to silhouette the figure against a lighter background. Rodin produced this type of drawing in two distinct stages. He began with his eyes fixed on the model (rather than on his paper) and almost blindly recorded the model’s movement or acrobatic pose. The second phase involved tracing and refining the contours of his drawing and adding wash to give material substance to the figure. When Rodin found a pose that he liked, he created multiple variations of that pose, drawn either freehand or using his tracing technique.