The large-format chalk drawing represents the earliest surviving self-portrait by Ruth Baumgarte. With only a few strokes, the young draftswoman captured the features and proportions of her face. She varied her strokes between broad hatchings and narrow marks set in black to emphasize essential parts of the face: her characteristic bangs, the area around her eyes, and the neck and chin line. The brownish background of the paper pushes forward through areas left blank, giving her countenance a soft complexion. A cloth band holds back her hair, which falls to her narrowly rendered shoulders, and the collar of her blouse peeks out from her sweater, while the space is indicated with a few lines. 

With her head slightly turned, her mouth gently open, and her eye highlighted in black, she gazes unerringly at the viewer. All her senses, such is the message of the portrait, are open to the world and at the same time turned toward it with restrained energy. The artist leaves traces of the creation of the drawing visible through a few erased passages. It remains unclear whether the work is completed or unfinished.

The exact date of origin of the drawing is not known. However, the certainty in setting the anatomically correct proportions of the face and the differentiated lines indicate that Ruth Baumgarte had already received drawing lessons. At the age of fifteen, her mother had arranged for her to attend Emmy Stalmann’s Private Kunstschule des Westens (Private Art School of the West) on Kantstrasse in Berlin. From there, she transferred to the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste (State Academy of Fine Arts) on Hardenbergstrasse in 1941. Drawing would henceforth become the most important medium of her artistic career, and close observation, which is evident in the highlighting of the area around the eyes, would become one of the most important ways of ascertaining herself and her surroundings.