This work is one of the many drawings of heads in coloured chalks which Solomon made during the latter years of his career. Usually in profile, their contours blurred to a melting softness, these faces are rapt and withdrawn, their eyes lowered or closed in dreamlike contemplation. Solomon's depictions of young men have been described as the male counterparts of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's images of favourite models such as Alexa Wilding and Jane Morris: embodying the artist's personal ideal, they are beautiful, languid and sometimes almost expressionless, allowing viewers to project on to them their own feelings and fantasies.Solomon's frequent choice of chalk as a medium late in his career was probably influenced by its cheapness in comparison with oil paint or watercolour, and the limitations imposed on him by the lack of a studio space in which to work. However, its misty softness also made it an apt medium in which to capture his ethereal, visionary images.