Woman Putting Her Foot into Water, with Small Sketch of Standing Woman

Henry Stacy Marks · n.d.

Medium

Black crayon heightened with white gouache squared in black crayon, on blue laid paper

Original size

45.3 × 31 cm (17 7/8 × 12 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

This intimate drawing captures a quiet, unguarded moment — a woman pausing at the water's edge, rendered with the kind of relaxed attentiveness that distinguishes a genuine study from a formal composition. Henry Stacy Marks was a Victorian painter and Royal Academician best known for his wit, his naturalist's eye, and his affection for figure subjects that resist grandeur in favour of small human truths. Working in black crayon heightened with white gouache on blue laid paper, he used a technique with deep roots in academic draughtsmanship — the tinted ground providing a mid-tone from which both shadow and light could be built outward. The inclusion of a secondary sketch of a standing woman on the same sheet gives the work a sketchbook intimacy, the feel of a mind working things through rather than arriving at conclusions. Marks published his memoirs, *Pen and Pencil Sketches*, in 1894, and his written voice carries the same gentle observation visible in drawings like this one. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the drawing's tonal delicacy into paint, preserving the soft contrast between shadow and highlight that gives the original its quiet, contemplative mood.