A red chalk drawing of a crouching child, discovered in a private Italian collection, has been attributed to French modernist painter Édouard Manet by leading art historian Emily Beeny. The child in the drawing resembles a street urchin depicted in Manet's masterpiece The Old Musician, in which the artist sought to capture the humanity of homeless and marginalised people. This attribution is significant because it represents a rare discovery of a previously unknown work by one of the major figures of French modernism.

The drawing measures 20.5cm by 17.5cm and exemplifies the red chalk life studies Manet created in the 1850s and 1860s, influenced by Renaissance draughtsmanship. The attribution was confirmed through stylistic analysis—including Manet's characteristic use of light and shadow and his distinctive depiction of plump, tapered fingers—as well as UV analysis revealing Manet's faded studio stamp in the lower right corner. Although the work was squared for transfer to canvas, no finished composition by Manet corresponding to this drawing is known to exist. The identity of the child subject, believed to be a girl around six years old, remains uncertain, though it may represent the same model who appears in The Old Musician; the work's original purpose and early provenance similarly remain mysterious.