This sheet of studies was originally part of Gauguin’s now dismantled and dispersedSmall Martinique Sketchbook, which appears to have originally been the property of his Spanish friend, the sculptor Paco Durrio, whose portrait he painted seated and playing the guitar.

The woman in profile holding a bowl is a study for a figure in the artist’s TropicalConversation (DW 251), a painting last recorded as lot 21 in the sale of Edgar R. Eisner, which was held at Christie’s in New York on May 15, 1985.

The other drawing was used by the artist when he was painting On the Banks of theRiver, Martinique (DW 252), a work Gauguin exchanged in late 1887 or early 1888 with his new friend Vincent van Gogh for two still-life paintings, each depicting a pair of cut and wilted sunflower heads (F375 and F376). These were works that Gauguin had just seen and admired at an exhibition of contemporary art held in the restaurant of the Grand-Bouillon Le Chalet on the Avenue de Clichy in Paris.