Female Nude

In the early 1890s the nude that critics accepted was smooth and idealised, usually dressed up as a goddess or a figure from myth. Breitner painted the body the way he painted everything else, plainly, as a real person in a real room. His nudes were criticised for exactly that, for being too realistic and not stylised in the fashion of the day. This study from around 1892 comes out of that unfashionable honesty. He worked from a living model in the studio and gave her the same unsentimental attention he gave to the working streets of Amsterdam.