According to the artist Joe DeYong, who lived with Charles and Nancy Russell and learned from the artist in his studio, Russell spent part of each day—especially the hours following dinner—making small, quick pencil sketches like the one seen here. Some of them were no bigger than a few inches, and they could be made on the blank side of virtually any piece of paper that was handy. The Russell estate papers contain many business letters with their reverse sides covered with the artist’s light pencil sketches. Russell’s mind was always at work, and he was constantly making these small drawings as notes for larger compositions that inhabited his imagination. He once told a newspaper reporter that he could never paint all the ideas that he had in his head in his lifetime. De Yong remembered Russell seated in the living room of his house, drawing under the low light of a parlor lamp. Hundreds of these small drawings survive, a testimony to the often-repeated observation that Russell’s hands were never still.