The drawing we are presenting is most likely a preparatory study for one of the figures in La Séguia, près de Biskra (1884), which was exhibited at the 1885 Salon and is now in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay. The painting is set in the Biskra oasis, on the edge of the Sahara, where the network of irrigation canals—the séguia—shapes both the landscape and daily life. In the final composition, the young woman crouching at the edge of one of these canals brings the background to life, blending into the peaceful scene of washerwomen and water carriers. The subject thus forms part of the long series that Guillaumet devoted, beginning in the 1860s, to women by the water—whether washerwomen or amphora-bearers—a theme he tirelessly explored through his encounters with Saharan oases.