Simon Andreas Krausz made this drawing of a child’s head using pen and brown ink, probably at the end of the 18th century in the Netherlands. In this period, artists were often trained through formal apprenticeships, and drawings like this would have been made to practice observation, proportion and expression. The two studies here show the same child’s head from different angles. Krausz probably made them in preparation for a painting or more finished drawing. The institutional culture of the art academy prized accuracy and anatomical knowledge, as well as an understanding of classical artistic principles. Such a drawing, therefore, reflects the artist’s social position, his ambition to produce high-status art, and his immersion in a hierarchical system of art production and evaluation. Art historians can research institutional archives, biographies and other primary source documents to reconstruct the economic and cultural conditions under which artists like Krausz made their work. By paying attention to these social contexts, we can get a clearer picture of art’s complex place in the past.