Before embarking into his professional career as a painter in Philadelphia, Eakins lived in Paris for nearly four years, between 1866 and 1870, pursuing academic training at the École des Beaux-Arts. There, he was granted a coveted admission to the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, a renowned conservative painter whose "orientalist" paintings of North African and other exotic subjects constitute the main reference behind this drawing. Reflecting the technical influence of the Gérôme's drawings as well as the aesthetic conventions of orientalist painting style, this drawing is only one of the few surviving head studies realized by Eakins in Paris during these formative years.