Nude on a Sofa

Short hair, very fine eyebrows, a small mouth painted a strong red. This is a woman of Paris at the end of the 1920s, and Derain set her inside one of the oldest themes in painting, the reclining nude. He painted her between 1929 and 1930, life-size, on a canvas more than 1.8 metres wide. The model is thought to be Raymonde Knaublich, a young woman with whom Derain had a son some years later. Her pale body lies against the dark green sofa with no drawn outline around it, and a black drape, a pink cloth and a white one lie close to her legs. The pose is awkward, one wrist turned back on the armrest. The dealer Paul Guillaume, who owned the picture from 1930, reproduced it in his magazine Les Arts à Paris in July 1931.