© The estate of Bernard Meninsky

As is visible from this confident pastel study of a female nude depicted from the back, with her hands clasped behind her head, Meninsky possessed a true talent for draughtsmanship. This resulted in him, in 1914, aged just 23, and only two years after studying at the Slade School of Art, becoming a teacher of life drawing at the Central School of Art, and in 1920 succeeding Walter Sickert in the same post at the Westminster School of Art evening classes. Although the date of this particular drawing is not known, Meninsky’s style and the model’s ample-bodied nature are evocative of the Neo-classical manner characterising his oil depictions of the female form from the 1930s onwards.