Two Studies of a Child (Paulette Helleu?)

This graphite drawing features two studies of the same child absorbed in play, though the figure at the lower right was sketched on a separate piece of paper that was later pasted onto the larger sheet. The child depicted is likely one of Helleu's three children with his wife, Alice Guérin. The strange claw-like hands of the child are found in other sheets of studies of infants, and the slightly longer tousled hair of this child suggests it might be his daughter Paulette (1904-2009; see a portrait of Paulette as an infant in the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne). In several sheets depicting Paulette with her mother, and alone playing, she wears a similar dress with a placket, including two sheets from 1907 when Paulette would have been three years old, suggesting a comparable date for the main study on the Morgan sheet.