Peter Blake was a student at the Royal College of Art between 1953 and 1956, and this drawing was made in the penultimate year of his studies there. Blake’s reputation as the ‘Father of British Pop Art’ only evokes one dimension of his artistic personality. Blake is an accomplished line draughtsman capable of translating a life subject into an elementary scheme. The early graphic manner of David Hockney, especially in his pen-and-ink portrait drawings, was partly inspired by Blake’s. Girl’s Head and Shoulders Back View was apparently studied from life but distils its subject into a lucid composition of great simplicity. The naked figure is lying on furniture covered with patterned fabric, her right arm raised up and crooked back so her fingers appear on the other side of her head. Her hair is tied up and her exposed back, modelled very lightly with short strokes of the pencil, fills most of the composition. Her partially exposed breast lends a gentle eroticism to the image, and this quality has been a persistent theme throughout Blake’s career. The small sheet of paper is filled to the edges, with the figure’s topknot cropped at the upper edge and her hips disappearing at the lower edge. The model has not been identified.

A relatively small number of finished works exist from Blake’s time as a student at the Royal College. In paintings from 1954 and 1955, he elaborated a personally distinctive figure type: earnest, big-headed, small-bodied, comic book-like, often with glazed facial expressions. The type is epitomised in Children Reading Comics (1954, Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery), Preparation for Entry into Jerusalem (1955/56, Royal College of Art) and On the Balcony (1955–57, Tate). By contrast, Blake’s line drawings of the same period are naturalistic, assiduously attentive to the subject, and minimal in their mark-making. Man with Glasses and Victor, Ruth and Peter provide examples. These and most other publicly-known examples of Blake’s early drawings are either sketch-like or only partially finished. Girl's Head and Shoulders Back View is comparatively unusual insofar as the composition covers the full extent of the sheet.