This is one of two portrait heads of painter and draughtsman Horace Brodzky (1885-1969), whose work is also represented in the Ben Uri Collection. Brodzky met sculptor Gaudier-Brzeska in 1913 and sat for a bust (Portrait of Brodzky, 1913, plaster and bronze), for which this is a study. Brodzky published a biography of Gaudier-Brzeska in 1933.