Beaume enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1817, and later entered the studio of Gros. He then embarked on a successful career as a history painter, which included several commissions from king Louis-Philippe, but later he began producing genre works, many of them in the style of Greuze. He received several medals at the Salons, where he first exhibited in 1819. Beaume was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1836.
Unlike the other pencil sketch by Beaume, no direct parallel has yet been extablished between this sheet of a girl (done in the idiom of Greuze) and any other work by the artist. It presumably served the same purpose as the previous drawing, namely as a memorandum for the artist’s own use. ( Wiepke Loos)